Mile High Report
The narrative after the Super Bowl is one that comes around about once a decade - winning with pressure from the defensive line
The Philadelphia Eagles sacked Patrick Mahomes six times in the Super Bowl with very little blitzing (rushing five or more defenders); They blitzed twice. The also had 11 QBhits and pressured Mahomes on 40% of his dropbacks, or almost as much as Kermit the quarterback got pressured the last time the Chiefs got blown out in the Super Bowl. (Dang! It felt good to type that sentence!)
According to PFF, Mahomes was pressured on 55.4% of his dropbacks when the Bucs blew out the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Mahomes was pressured on 40% of his dropbacks last Sunday.
The 40% pressure rate is a little skewed because the Eagles called off the dogs at the end and played their backups, so it’s not one of the highest pressure rates on a QB in the Super Bowl. The best is still the rate the Bucs pressured Kermit in 2020. The pressure rate the Broncos got on Cam Newton in Super Bowl 50 is still the third highest in Super Bowl history. Only the Bucs on Mahomes and the Patriots on Matt Ryan were higher.
PFF’s pressure numbers don’t make sense though (30 pressures on 36 dropbacks?!?). PFR shows he was pressured 16 times on his 42 dropbacks (38.1%). Kermit had 32 passing attempts, six sacks and four scrambles.
Interestingly enough the Eagles blitzed a fair amount during the regular season (see below) and were not all that great at generating pressure without blitzing. The KC OL was garbage in the Super Bowl.
The league blitzed on 26% of dropbacks in 2024. The Jaguars blitzed the least frequently and the Vikings blitzed the most frequently. The Broncos blitzed 31.1% of the time. If you take the pressure rate and subtract the blitz rate you can find how often a team was able to get pressure WITHOUT blitzing (far right column). Ten teams were able to do that on a regular basis with the Packers and the Bills being the best at it.
On the other end of the spectrum the Panthers and the Vikings failed to get pressure fairly often, despite blitzing frequently. The average team blitzed 2.6% more than the pressure they were able to generate. The Broncos were about average in this respect.
The Eagles pressure rate during the regular season was below average, while the Broncos 29.2% was second only to the Cowboys 31.9%. The Broncos were average or above average in terms of hurry rate and QB knockdown rate. Not surprisingly, Denver led the league in sack rate at 9.42%. The Patriots were the worst in the league at sack rate, but there were three teams that were worse at getting pressure.
The correlation between pressure rate and passer rating allowed in 2024 was -0.27. Which is decently strong in the world of sports. This means that in general if you were good at...
