Simeon Rice was one of the best pass rushers of his generation. He led all players in sacks from 1996 to 2005, and also from 1999 to 2002. During those four seasons, Rice played on defenses that faced just 2,098 pass plays: every team other than the Bills (2,078 pass plays) faced more pass plays during those years.

In fact, in his average season — weighted for the number of sacks Rice recorded — his defenses faced just 32.78 pass attempts (including sacks) per game. The reason I weight for number of sacks is that if Rice played on defenses that faced 600 pass attempts during his big sack years, and 400 pass attempts during his low sack years, that’s not the same as facing 500 pass attempts every year. A player’s reputation is built off of his big sack years, which generally coincide with his prime; as a result, those years should received more weight. If a 37-year-old Rice played on a team that faced 700 pass attempts and Rice barely played, it wouldn’t make sense to count that equally with a year in his prime.

The table below shows every season of Rice’s career. By way of example, as a rookie, he played for Arizona and recorded 12.5 sacks, which is 10.25% of his career total. His Cardinals faced 548 pass plays (including sacks), or 34.25 per game that season, so when calculating his career grade, 10.25% of it will come from the 34.25 number. The “Prod” column is the product of the “Perc” column and the “TPA/G” column. The far right column shows the average NFL sack rate that season, which is shown only for reference.

I went ahead and did the same analysis for every pass rusher who has at least 50 sacks since 1982. In the table below, I show their average number of pass plays faced per game, which is weighted by the number of sacks they recorded. For reference, I also show the league average sack rate for their career, also weighted for their number of sacks they recorded each year.

As you can see, Rice is a pretty big outlier: The graph below shows the same data as above: on the X-Axis, career sacks; on the Y-Axis, average pass attempts faced per game. Rice’s bubble is in red.

Rice was consistently facing about 10% fewer pass attempts than the average player. And he did it in a slightly less sack-friendly environment, too (of the top 25 players in career sacks, his league average sack rate of 6.7% ranks 16th; Lawrence Taylor, at 7.5%, ranks 1st; DeMarcus Ware, at 6.2%, ranks 25th). During his prime, Rice was a devastating pass rusher, and his raw sack totals understimate that. Another reason his career totals are slightly less impressive than you think? He basically was all prime: Rice recorded 119 sacks from ages 22 to 31, the 4th-most by any player during those years. But that was it for Rice: unlike most great pass rushers, he was basically done by 31, and didn’t have a bunch of 5 and 6 sack seasons to boost his career totals. For example, Dwight Freeney also entered the league at 22 and also stopped being a difference maker at age 31; Freeney had 102.5 sacks from ages 22 to 31, but also recorded 23 sacks in 69 games in the six years from ages 32 to 37.

What do you think?