As you might know, the exciting field of regression analysis has some fun things to say about sports. Here is how it looks with pass rushers!
↵↵↵Football Outsiders classifies quarterback hits as a play in which a defender knocks the quarterback to the ground in the act of throwing or having thrown, adjusted to remove roughing the passer penalties. Quarterback hurries are classified as plays in which our game charters judge that a quarterback was hurried in the act of throwing the ball. There seems to be a strong correlation between seasons with low sack totals and high hit/hurry rates, and higher sack totals the next season. Regression to the mean seems to be one reason - if a player misses a high number of sacks by just a millisecond and has abnormally low sack totals as a result, it makes sense that under similar circumstances the next season, things would even out.
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Antonio Smith, of course, comes in sixth on the list of "lowest sack percentage per total hurries and hits," meaning that you should expect a few more sacks from Antonio this year. Hopefully, some of those come this Sunday.
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