Introducing True Pass Rush Productivity (TPRP): 2025
The missing link between True Pressure Rate and True Sack Rate
From a team perspective, both pressures and sacks are positive outcomes for a defense. But just like pressures or sacks viewed in isolation, they can mean very different things for the individual pass rusher responsible for the play.
Evaluating pass-rush production solely through raw pressure totals or sack counts often paints an incomplete picture.
Pressure tells us something.
Sacks tell us something.
But neither, on its own, tells us who produced the most impactful pass-rush seasons.
That gap has been the through-line of this work.
True Pressure Rate (TPR) was built to better isolate how pressures are earned, separating true one-on-one wins from scheme, cleanup, and fortunate circumstances.
True Sack Rate (TSR) was built to do the same for sacks, differentiating between high-difficulty finishes and those created by coverage, breakdowns, or opportunity.
Each metric answers a necessary question.
Neither is sufficient by itself.
I’ve been working toward a framework that meaningfully combines pressure generation and sack finishing for several years. The challenge was never access to data — it was structure. Pressure and sacks behave differently, are earned in different ways, and break in predictable ways when forced into a single efficiency number. Until those conflicts were resolved, combining them would have created more noise than signal.
True Pass Rush Productivity (TPRP) is the first framework I’ve been comfortable releasing because it respects those differences rather than flattening them.
TPRP is not a new way to count pressures or sacks. It evaluates how often earned pressure generation and earned sack finishing aligned across an entire season.
The goal is simple:
to identify which pass rushers consistently won their 1v1 matchups against quality competition and converted those wins into real, high-impact production — not just who accumulated numbers.
Why pressure and sacks must be paired
Pressure and sacks are related, but they are not interchangeable.
Pressure reflects a defender’s ability to consistently disrupt the quarterback.
Sacks reflect a defender’s ability to convert disruption into decisive outcomes.
Many pass-rush metrics collapse these ideas into a single efficiency number, often treating all disruption as equal. While that approach can be useful for describing how often something happened, it often struggles to explain why it happened — or what kind of season a player truly produced.
TPRP was built from a different starting point.
TPR asks whether a player generated pressure often enough — and with sufficient quality — for disruption to define the season.
TSR asks whether those pressures were finished efficiently into sacks.
TPRP asks whether the two aligned often enough, across the season, to constitute real production.
Some players generate pressure consistently but struggle to finish.
Some players finish efficiently but do not consistently generate pressure.
A smaller group does both — and does so often enough for it to define their season.
TPRP exists to preserve those distinctions.
What TPRP measures (and what it doesn’t)
TPRP answers one question:
Who produced the most complete pass-rush seasons?
It rewards:
Consistent, earned pressure generation relative to peers
High-quality pressures
High-quality sacks
It penalizes:
Finishing without consistent disruption
Pressure volume driven by circumstance rather than wins
Efficiency spikes unsupported by season-long pressure
TPRP measures what was realized on the field across the full season. It is not designed to identify flashes, ceiling, or small-sample breakout signals — areas where TPR and TSR remain valuable on their own.
The TPRP framework (high-level)
TPRP is built from two separate signals that are intentionally kept distinct.
Pressure side (TPR-driven):
How often — and how cleanly — a player generated pressure.
Finish side (TSR-driven):
How efficiently those pressures were converted into sacks.
By keeping these signals separate and evaluating how they reinforce one another, TPRP avoids the common trap of allowing sack efficiency to overwhelm pressure generation.
In short: disruption must be earned first; finishing determines how valuable that disruption became.
EDGE and IDL: shared framework, different environments
TPRP is calculated consistently across all pass rushers. The math does not change by position.
What changes is the environment in which that production occurs.
Edge defenders operate with more space, wider rush angles, and greater freedom to attack isolated blockers. In that context, sustained pressure generation becomes the primary separator, with sack finishing used to differentiate among disruptors.
Interior defenders operate in tighter spaces and closer proximity to the quarterback. Pressure quality is often harder to earn, and sacks frequently require faster processing, tighter timing, and higher-difficulty finishes. As a result, efficient sack conversion carries meaningful weight in evaluating interior seasons — not as a replacement for disruption, but as confirmation that disruption translated into impact.
TPRP accounts for both realities without forcing different equations for different positions. Pressure and finishing are evaluated within positional context, then brought together to reflect overall season-long pass-rush impact.
When EDGE and IDL are viewed together, TPRP highlights players who consistently combined disruption and finishing in ways that altered offensive outcomes — regardless of where they lined up.
Sections below include EDGE-specific and IDL-specific rankings, tier groupings, and interpretation.
