Official NFL stats show T.J. Watt tied with Michael Strahan for the NFL single-season sack record, each with 22.5. Strahan set the mark first in 2001, Watt tying him in 2021. But there’s new evidence that Watt should stand alone for the official mark.
Twitter user and YouTuber JaguarGator9, who makes videos about all things quirky in football history, made the case yesterday. He shared a clip of one of Strahan’s sacks that season, a Week 8 game against the Dallas Cowboys. On a third and three with the ball at the 44-yard line, Strahan was credited for sacking QB Clint Stoerner.
But looking at the play, as JaguarGator did, Stoerner appears to be past the 44-yard line when Strahan takes him down. If so, that would be a gain, not a sack.
Lop off one of Strahan’s sacks and he ends the year at 21.5, giving Watt the official edge.
Digging into the play some more, I found the game and looked to see where the ball was snapped on the following play. It was a punt and unfortunately, the camera is at a bit of an angle. But it appears the ball is at the 44-yard line, which would go down as a sack of zero yards (which is how it’s officially scored).
And that seems to be the crux of the issue. The officials opted not to change the line of scrimmage on fourth down. Had they put the ball at the 43, it would’ve gone down as a one-yard gain and no sack for Strahan. But because whether it was at the 44 or 43 for a fourth down, the refs seemingly just quickly marked the line of scrimmage, knowing it didn’t have a major impact on the play. And no one was thinking about the possibility of Strahan’s sack record early in a Week 8 game, even though he had 12.5 sacks coming into the game.
There is one caveat. As I like to note when it comes to sacks, this is the official sack record recognized by the NFL. Sacks didn’t become an officially tracked stat until 1982, more than 60 years after the NFL began. According to the great research conducted by Pro Football Refence, Al “Bubba” Baker is the unofficial record holder with his 23 sacks notched as a rookie in 1978. Unless someone can find an error with his stats, it still puts him ahead of Watt.
But officially? There’s a real case to argue here. Not the NFL is actually going to go back in time and change it. And, of course, this says nothing of Strahan’s final sack on Brett Favre, questionable for Favre’s dive that basically gave Strahan the mark.
