When Steelers defensive lineman Stephon Tuitt sacked Jaguars quarterback Jake Luton on Sunday, forcing a fumble and recovering it for good measure, that brought Pittsburgh ever closer to what is acknowledged as the NFL record for sacks by a team in consecutive games. Tuitt’s takedown brought Pittsburgh’s streak to 67 games, while the Buccaneers had a sack in 69 straight games, a streak that ended in 2003.
Here’s the problem with that “record.” It’s not accurate. Individual sack numbers are filmy at best before the league started tabulating them as an official statistic in 1982 (though historians like John Tunney have done a lot of excellent, detailed work to get accurate numbers before then), but there are team sack numbers that go back decades before.
And with that, we can be sure that the Steelers are not chasing the Buccaneers — they are chasing two other teams. Per Chase Stuart of the indispensable Pro Football Reference site:
Love my man @ScottHanson who is the best in the business, so I hate to inform him that's he's got some bad info. The all-time record for consecutive games with a sack by a defense is 76, set by the Roger Brown/Alex Karras/Wayne Walker/Joe Schmidt Detroit Lions, from 1960 to 1965.
— Football Perspective (@fbgchase) November 22, 2020
And if you include the playoffs, the Harvey Martin/Randy White/Too Tall Jones/Jethro Pugh Cowboys also had a 76 game streak, stretching into week 14 of the 1980 season.
— Football Perspective (@fbgchase) November 22, 2020
Hanson, who hosts RedZone for the NFL Network and is indeed the best in the business, isn’t the only one getting this wrong. It’s universally acknowledged that the Buccaneers hold the record the Steelers are trying to break, but with more detailed research of the pre-1982 time period, we have more and better information.
The Lions of that era did indeed put up two double-digit sack games against Bart Starr and the Vince Lombardi Packers — an 11-sack game in a 12-7 win on November 7, 1965, and a 10-sack game in a 26-14 win on November 22, 1962. In the 1965 game, Starr lost 109 total yards, and got just four passes off in the second half, losing 93 yards in the final 30 minutes.
“There was a general breakdown up front,” Lombardi said. “We couldn’t handle their defense, and that was the story of the game.”
After one of the 11 sacks, Lombardi called a play in which halfback Paul Hornung took the ball from center, and promptly threw it to Lions defensive back Bruce Maher. Another of Starr’s sacks resulted in a safety.
Plus, Karras played Mongo in “Blazing Saddles,” which is cooler than anything he did on the field, and the man is a Hall of Famer.
(Maybe the Packers should have signed Sherriff Bart).
As for the Cowboys of their era… well, yeah. Dealing with Harvey Martin and Randy White (the co-MVPs of Super Bowl XII) along with Ed “Too Tall” Jones and Jethro Pugh was no fun at all.
It’s a shame that there aren’t detailed and official individual sack numbers for the NFL’s entire history, because that would give us a far more comprehensive sense of defensive value for players who never got their just due — sackmasters of the past like Coy Bacon, Al “Bubba” Baker, and Richard “Tombstone” Jackson. So, the very least we can do is to get the team sack stats right when we have them.