In 1994, the “average” sack came from a player that weighted 266 pounds. Wait, what do you mean by average sack? Well, if you look at all 937 sacks in 1994, and identify the weight of the sacker on each sack, you can calculate the weight of the average sack in each season. John Randle was 290 pounds, and he had 13.5 sacks that year, so he gets 13.5 times as much weight a player with one sack. The graph below shows the weight of the player producing an average sack in each year since 1982. As you can see, it peaked in the mid-’90s, and has declined slightly since.

However, players in general are getting heavier, including in the front seven. The graph below shows the average weight of a player in the front 7 — weighted by the number of starts by such a player — for each year since 1982. That data is in orange; the blue line showing the average sack weight is still included in the chart for reference.

For most of the ’80s, the average defensive player in the front seven was heavier than the average sacker. That trend has now shifted. What does it mean? That, of course, is always in the eye of the beholder. One inescapable conclusion, though, is that a lighter front seven player is more likely to record a sack than a heavier front seven player; the opposite was true 30 years ago.

What do you think?