Jason Campbell's Sack Rate

The guys at Turf Show Times [1] are wondering whether Jason Campbell [2] might be a good fit for them next year as a free agent.

They raised several concerns about Campbell in the piece.

Concerns I have about Campbell: 1) How does the high sack rate impact his future, 2) He'll turns 29 next season, a year younger than Kyle Boller, is that too old for a rebuilding team, and 3) Is he enough?

I'm not sure about points two or three, but point one is pretty easy to look at. I went to the wonderful Play Index at pro-football-reference.com [3] to create a list of similar players to Campbell.

Campbell has 228 attempts and 25 sacks through eight games, yielding a sack rate of 9.9 percent. If we double those totals, he'd be at 456 attempts and 50 sacks for a full season. To find similar quarterbacks to Campbell, I instructed the Play Index to find every quarterback since 1980 who had been sacked between 45 and 55 times in a season while throwing between 430 and 480 attempts.

The resulting list [4] includes a few scrubs (David Carr, Tim Couch) and a LOT of good quarterbacks.

It's a list that Campbell's numbers, so far this year, belong in. He has a 66.2 completion percentage, higher than any of the quarterbacks on the list, while his 7.36 yards per attempt place him eighth out of 18. If you prefer to use p-f-r's Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, he ranks ninth. (On the other hand, his adjusted yards per attempt, which doesn't include the effects of sacks, would be 15th.)

Looking at comparable seasons suggests that Campbell's performance this year is a positive indicator of his ability to play a successful quarterback going forward, perception be damned.