Brees is probably not about to throw an incomplete pass or take a sack.
In 1984, Steve Bartkowski ranked 1st in completion percentage but 28th in sack rate (12.9%!).
In 1991,Dave Krieg ranked 29th in sack rate when he led the NFL in completion percentage.
More often than you think, players trade low-probability passes for sacks, and vice-versa. Last year, when Brees led the NFL in completion percentage, the next 6 players in that metric — Kirk Cousins, Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan, Derek Carr, Marcus Mariota, and Deshaun Watson — all ranked outside of the top 15 in sack rate. (And to be clear, a low sack rate gives you a high ranking, just like interception rate, since sacks are a bad thing.) The last player to lead the league in completion percentage that wasn’t Brees was Sam Bradford in 2016; that year, he ranked 21st in sack rate. It recalled David Carr leading the NFL in completion percentage in 2006 when he ranked 26th in sack rate.
To have an excellent sack rate, you need to throw the ball quickly no matter what, even if nobody is open; that carries with it a high risk of lowering your completion percentage. Which makes it really impressive when a player ranks well in both categories. (And if you want to create a statistic that includes sacks in the denominator when calculating completion percentage, I approve!)
Brees is going to lead the NFL in completion percentage in 2019. With one week left in the season, Brees has a 4% lead on the rest of the NFL. The only interesting question is whether Brees will set yet another single-season record; right now, he is at 75.3%, and the current record is 74.4%, set by Brees last year. He’s got a good chance to do it: even if he went 21-of-32 today (which is worse than he’s done in 8 of 9 games this year), he would still beat last year’s mark.
So for the second time in his career, Brees will threepeat as the NFL completion percentage king (in addition to ’17-’19, he did it from ’09-’11). The bigger question is whether he will also lead in sack rate. Here are the top five quarterbacks in sack rate entering week 17:
| Rk | Player | Tm | Age | Att | Sk | Sk% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Drew Brees* | NOR | 40 | 348 | 12 | 3.3 |
| 2 | Dak Prescott | DAL | 26 | 563 | 20 | 3.4 |
| 3 | Jared Goff | LAR | 25 | 581 | 21 | 3.5 |
| 4 | Patrick Mahomes* | KAN | 24 | 459 | 17 | 3.6 |
| 5 | Tom Brady | NWE | 42 | 584 | 26 | 4.3 |
If Brees can avoid taking a sack today, then he’ll almost certainly finish as the sack rate king for the third time in his career. More notably, he would also become just the 4th player since the merger to lead the NFL in both completion percentage and sack rate in the same season.
Drew Brees in 2011 was the most recent. He easily led the NFL in completion percentage, but very narrowly topped Matt Hasselbeck, 3.52% to 3.54%, for the sack crown.
Carson Palmer also pulled off this trick in 2005, but by extremely narrow margins. He had a 3.60% sack rate, besting Peyton Manning and his 3.62% sack rate. He completed 67.8% of his passes, just squeaking by Kelly Holcomb (67.4%) and Manning (67.3%).
The cleanest double crown was pulled off by Norm Snead in 1972. He completed 60.3% of his passes; no other quarterback was over 57.4%. He also had a sack rate of just 2.4%; Joe Namath was second at 3.3%, and nobody else was within one percent of Snead.
So if Brees does this, it would be pretty cool. But it’s probably more trivia than anything, because Brees has almost always been good at completing passes and avoiding sacks. Unlike some of the quarterbacks (including one from this season) who trade incomplete passes for sacks, Brees is just a great quarterback and that is reflected in the fact that he rarely takes sacks and he completes a lot of passes.
In 2018, he was 1st in completion percentage and 2nd in sack rate (3.4%; Andrew Luck was at 2.7%).
In 2017, he was 1st in completion percentage and 2nd in sack rate (3.6%; Philip Rivers was at 3.0%).
In 2011, he was 1st in both.
In 2010, he was 1st in completion percentage and 3rd in sack rate (3.7%; Peyton Manning was at 2.3%, Eli Manning at 2.9%).
In 2007, he was 3rd in completion percentage (67.5%; Tom Brady was at 68.86% and Chad Pennington was at 68.85%) and 1st in sack rate.
From 1970 to 2018, there were 35 seasons where a quarterback’s ranks in completion percentage and sack rate summed to 6 or less (i.e., a proxy for being top-3 in both categories, or 2nd and 4th, or 1st and 5th). Over a quarter of those seasons came from Peyton Manning, and over half came from Manning, Brees, or Dan Marino.
| Quarterback | Year | Team | Comp% | Cmp% Rank | Sack% | Sack% Rank | Sum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carson Palmer | 2005 | cin | 67.78% | 1 | 3.6% | 1 | 2 |
| Norm Snead | 1972 | nyg | 60.31% | 1 | 2.4% | 1 | 2 |
| Drew Brees | 2011 | nor | 71.23% | 1 | 3.52% | 1 | 2 |
| Drew Brees | 2018 | nor | 74.44% | 1 | 3.36% | 2 | 3 |
| Peyton Manning | 2003 | clt | 66.96% | 1 | 3.08% | 2 | 3 |
| Drew Brees | 2017 | nor | 72.01% | 1 | 3.6% | 2 | 3 |
| John Brodie | 1970 | sfo | 58.99% | 2 | 2.07% | 1 | 3 |
| Peyton Manning | 2009 | clt | 68.83% | 2 | 1.72% | 1 | 3 |
| Peyton Manning | 2010 | clt | 66.27% | 2 | 2.3% | 1 | 3 |
| Drew Brees | 2010 | nor | 68.09% | 1 | 3.66% | 3 | 4 |
| Peyton Manning | 2006 | clt | 64.99% | 3 | 2.45% | 1 | 4 |
| Peyton Manning | 2012 | den | 68.61% | 2 | 3.48% | 2 | 4 |
| Peyton Manning | 1999 | clt | 62.1% | 2 | 2.56% | 2 | 4 |
| Troy Aikman | 1995 | dal | 64.81% | 2 | 3.14% | 2 | 4 |
| Troy Aikman | 1996 | dal | 63.66% | 2 | 3.73% | 2 | 4 |
| Dan Marino | 1984 | mia | 64.18% | 3 | 2.25% | 1 | 4 |
| Peyton Manning | 2013 | den | 68.29% | 3 | 2.66% | 1 | 4 |
| Drew Brees | 2007 | nor | 67.48% | 3 | 2.4% | 1 | 4 |
| Brian Sipe | 1980 | cle | 60.83% | 3 | 3.99% | 2 | 5 |
| Joe Montana | 1984 | sfo | 64.58% | 2 | 4.85% | 3 | 5 |
| Peyton Manning | 2005 | clt | 67.33% | 3 | 3.62% | 2 | 5 |
| Peyton Manning | 2004 | clt | 67.61% | 3 | 2.55% | 2 | 5 |
| Steve DeBerg | 1979 | sfo | 60.03% | 3 | 2.86% | 2 | 5 |
| Drew Brees | 2009 | nor | 70.62% | 1 | 3.75% | 4 | 5 |
| Fran Tarkenton | 1975 | min | 64.24% | 1 | 5.97% | 5 | 6 |
| Joe Montana | 1987 | sfo | 66.83% | 1 | 5.24% | 5 | 6 |
| Joe Montana | 1986 | sfo | 62.21% | 3 | 3.76% | 3 | 6 |
| Jeff Garcia | 2000 | sfo | 63.28% | 3 | 4.1% | 3 | 6 |
| Warren Moon | 1992 | oti | 64.74% | 3 | 4.42% | 3 | 6 |
| Dan Marino | 1986 | mia | 60.67% | 5 | 2.66% | 1 | 6 |
| Dan Fouts | 1983 | sdg | 63.24% | 4 | 3.95% | 2 | 6 |
| Dan Marino | 1985 | mia | 59.26% | 5 | 3.08% | 1 | 6 |
| Dan Marino | 1994 | mia | 62.6% | 5 | 2.84% | 1 | 6 |
| Fran Tarkenton | 1978 | min | 60.31% | 3 | 4.51% | 3 | 6 |
| Norm Snead | 1973 | nyg | 55.74% | 5 | 3.69% | 1 | 6 |
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