Stat Snip: Broncos Pass Blocking Efficiency

The Broncos are making their way on to a 1st round bye, and while there are a few main reasons for it, I feel one should be discussed. One of the biggest strengths this season has been the combination of a quick release quarterback and an improving offensive line, but I wanted to delve further into these players. Often we hear a offensive lineman's impact isn't felt on the stat sheet but thankfully a number of sites have developed more accurate measures by watching the games and looking to see if a player was the reason for a pressure or hit on a quarterback rather than purely looking at sacks allowed. This way we can get a near perfect image of how a player is doing in terms of pass blocking their quarterbacks.

Now I'll be listing sacks, hits and hurries allowed along with the total number of pressures allowed. Then I'll be showing the pure pass blocking efficiency (PBE) which takes the total pressures divided by pass blocking snaps. This percentage is the chance of allowing a pressure per snap. So for Ryan Clady:

- 539 Pass blocking snaps
- Allowed 1 sack, 5 hits, and 11 hurries for a total of 17 pressures
- So divide 17 by 539 and you get a pure PBE of 3.2%

So that means that Clady allows a pressure on 3.15% of his snaps, or he'll allow a pressure on about one of every 35 plays. So that we can compare that to the Weighted PBE we'll subtract that number by 100 and we'll get his pure PBE, so Clady's PBE is 96.8%. Then I'll also be adding a Weighted PBE which is created by Pro Football Focus which does the same as the pure PBE but gives more weight to sacks and other factors.

Real fast, these sack, hits and hurries numbers are those allowed by the specific player, if the sack is a coverage sack or if the QB walks into the defensive player or if the quarterback leaves the pocket and gets hit by another defender, those aren't on the line and aren't recorded.

Lastly I included the players rank in their specified position.That way we can see how each play stands up to his companions.

The table is sortable if you want to view it in different orders.

Now I know what you are thinking (since there are always thoughts about flaws in a metric), and I'm sure the biggest one is "but what about the effect of the quarterback?" As I mentioned above, sacks that are the QB's fault aren't recorded against the line. Now obviously having the 3rd best QB at avoiding sacks helps, no denying that, but to help alleviate some of the troubles I will include another look at sacks and how they happen, broken down by time after the snap.

So for Peyton Manning, he spends 55.8% of his time in the pocket for 2.5 seconds or less, either that ends in a pass or a sack. In that period Manning has been sacked 4 times, completes 70.9% of his passes for a rating of 99.6. The same applies under the columns about 2.6 seconds or more. Hope that is as clear as I intended to be.

Overall both the line and Manning are doing a solid job at pass protection, though the past two games have been a bit worse than the average for the season, hopefully that trend doesn't continue.