Sunday, August 03, 2008

Dallas Defensive Sacks vs. League Average Over the Years

by Yakuza Rich
Source: yakuzarich.blogspot.com

With my passion (that could be called an obsession) for studying sack totals, I decided to look at the Cowboys defense over the years. Like my previous post, I wanted to study how the Cowboys defense did in comparison to the league average.

This is important because like I've mentioned before, the passing game has changed over the years. As we go back further in time, more teams utilized 7 step drop backs and threw the ball deeper than they do today (even though I'm using stats that go back to only 1990, this is still true for the most part). Thus, it was easier for defenses to sack the QB more often in say 1990 that it is today in 2007. And my research shows this to be true as well (http://yakuzarich.blogspot.com/2008/...g-in-nfl.html).

So I took a look at Dallas' pass attempts per sack on defense over the years and compared that to the league average that season. Here's what I came up with:


YEAR.....................% DIFFERENCE FROM LEAGUE AVG

1994.............................................. +44.7%
2007.............................................. +22.5%
1996.............................................. +10.3%
1992.............................................. +6.9%
1995.............................................. +6.8%
2005.............................................+ 4.1%
1997.............................................. +0.9%
2003.............................................-1.8%
1990.............................................-3.1%
2006............................................-6.2%
2004............................................-10.1%
1999............................................-13.8%
1993............................................-16.3%
1998............................................-21.1%
2000...........................................-27.7%
2001...........................................-33.6%
2002...........................................-38.5%
1991............................................-40.1%