Is Roethlisberger the Steelers' Sack Problem?

This post is part of a series of posts that try to figure out who's to blame for the Steelers sack problems. The first story in the series listed how many sacks each lineman was responsible for. Now we're looking at how much of the blame can be put on quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Click here for all the posts in the series. To get this data, I went back and rewatched all 53 sacks from the Steelers' 2007 season including the playoff game, logging the type of rush, the time it took for the defender to get to Roethlisberger, who was responsible and any mitigating factors.

If Sean Mahan has gotten the majority of the blame for the Steelers' sack problems from Steelers fans and media members, Ben Roethlisberger hasn't been far behind. The logic is that the Steelers' guarterback holds onto the ball so long that he turns incomplete passes into sacks.

It's hard to argue the point. We all have seen numerous plays where Roethlisberger has slipped out of a blitzing linebacker's grasp, scrambled to the outside and then found Hines Ward or others downfield. But we've also seen plays where he spotted a blitzing cornerback, figured he could break the tackle, and went down on the initial hit. There are plays where Roethlisberger hangs on to the ball, gets hit and taken down when a quarterback who's less of a gambler would have simply thrown the ball into the stands.

SACKS FROM 3-MAN RUSH
<3 seconds	1
3-4 seconds	2
4+ seconds	1
SACKS FROM 4-MAN RUSH
<3 seconds	15
3-4 seconds	9
4+ seconds	7
SACKS FROM 5-MAN RUSH
<3 seconds	8
3-4 seconds	2
4+ seconds	1
SACKS FROM 6-MAN RUSH
<3 seconds	4
3-4 seconds	1
4+ seconds	0
SACKS FROM 7-MAN RUSH
<3 seconds	2
3-4 seconds	0
4+ seconds	0

While it happens, it's not happening as often as you may think. By my count, 30 of the Steelers 53 sacks were recorded on plays where Roethlisberger was initially hit in three seconds or less. From everything I can find, three seconds appears to be the generally accepted amount of the time when the warning bell in the quarterback's head starts to go off. On most plays, the line is expected to give the quarterback three seconds to drop back, set up, check one and maybe two receivers and get the ball out.

While the time to initial hit is not an absolute measure of whether Roethlisberger had time to pick out a receiver, it is a helpful indicator of whether the line did its job. There's no doubt that the 16 sacks that Roethlisberger took in 3.0 seconds or less against straight-up three or four-man rushes are the fault of the offensive line--it's not asking too much for five linemen to block four defensive linemen for three seconds. And it's actually pretty reasonable to expect that Roethlisberger will have four seconds to pick out a receiver against a three-man rush--after all, there are eight men in coverage so there's less open spaces for receivers to find.

As one of the commenters pointed out during the season, there is a difference between having three seconds to throw against a four-man rush and having three seconds to throw against a six-man rush. But the fact that 16 of the Steelers sacks came on plays where Roethlisberger was hit in less than three seconds by a three or four-man rush is a pretty clear sign of some serious offensive line problems. To put it in perspective, the Saints gave up 16 sacks all season.

On the other hand, I counted 19 sacks that could be termed coverage sacks. Not all of those are Roethlisberger's fault , but a large number of those sacks come on plays where someone like Peyton Manning might have thrown the ball away and avoided the sack.

In a most extreme case, there was a play against the Rams recorded a sack 6.3 seconds after the snap. No line can reasonably be asked to hold out a four-man rush for more than six seconds. There were three more sacks that took longer than five seconds to occur, and another five that took longer than four seconds. That's nine sacks where the line can reasonably say that Roethlisberger was asking too much from them.

Two of the Steelers sacks came on screen plays where the defense sniffed out the screen. Those can be blamed on play calling rather than any player--it's the offensive lineman's job to let the rush by, and if the rush gets to Big Ben too quickly while the running back is covered, it's better to take a sack than risk an interception.

I counted a total of 17 sacks that could reasonably be termed coverage sacks. Those include the nine sacks where Roethlisberger held onto the ball too long, several where there simply was no one open, and a couple of plays where an overload block left the line and backs with more blitzers than they could block., In one case Roethlisberger simply stepped out of bounds behind the line.

But here's the bad news for the Steelers offensive line--those 36 other sacks would still rank as a below average line (33 of them happened during the regular season). That would be worse than 16 other NFL teams by itself. And if you allow that even the best quarterback is going to hold on to the ball too long a couple of times a year, and that there will be four or five plays where a bad play call leaves the quarterback helpless and it's hard to envision any way that the Steelers would have given up less than 40 sacks with this line.

And there's one other factor to acknowledge. While Roethlisberger's decision to hang onto the ball may be responsible for some of the sacks, we also know that his size, strength and scrambling ability also keep him out of several sacks a season on plays where the average quarterback would have gone down.

This is a rough approximation, but if you blame 15 of the Steelers' 2007 sacks on Roethlisberger's tendency to hold onto the ball (and that's holding him to a very high standard), but also credit him with five sacks he avoided by breaking out of tackles where the average quarterback would have gone down, you're looking at him costing the team 10 sacks a season. That's a significant number, but the reality is that the Steelers line would give up plenty of sacks whether it was Roethlisberger or Dan Marino under center.