Tarvaris Jackson Struggled Under Pressure

It is no mystery that Tarvaris Jackson struggled at times in 2012. While he was better than most of us expected, he was still a weakness for this team. By most statistical measures he was below average, ranking 22nd in the league.

According the guys over at Pro Football Focus, Jackson struggled even more when under pressure. For starters, he was 22nd in the league at avoiding sacks. 22.4% of the time that he was pressured, Jackson was sacked. Best in the league was actually Eli Manning at 11.5%, while the worst in the league was Matt Moore at 27.3%. Jackson was clearly closer to the bottom of the league than the top.

And that doesn’t say anything about how often he held on to the ball to long and helped create that pressure. It’s just saying that once under pressure, Jackson struggled to avoid that sack. Unfortunately, that’s as good as the news gets for Jackson.

Jackson’s completion percentage was even worse. At 39.3%, he ranked 28th. Notable players with worse completion % than Jackson were Tim Tebow at 34.4% and Curtis Painter at 32%. Not exactly good company that Jackson is in there. On the other end of the scale is Drew Brees, who managed to complete an amazing 58.7% pf his passes when he was under pressure.

Jackson’s TD to interception ratio when under pressure was worse yet, ranking 29th in the league at .44 (4 TD to 9 Ints). There were only 5 players who were worse, and they included Curtis Painter and Dan Orlovsky. The best in that regard was Aaron Rogers, no surprise there. Even rookie Blaine Gabbert, who really struggled all season, finished the season with at 1.0 ratio, more than double Jackson’s.

Back in October I wrote that Jackson had been under pressure a lot, but that there was 10 teams who’s QB were pressured more. He was also fairly accurate when under pressure, ranking 12th in the league in that regard, though all the extra sacks he took instead of throwing the ball away like he should have definitely skewed that statistic.

It seems Jackson actually performed worse under pressure as the season wore on. So while the offensive line and running game were getting better and thus taking pressure off of Jackson, He was wilting even more under the pressure.

I guess this is just one more piece of evidence to demonstrated just how much the Seahawks need a better QB.