Like many terms in the NFL, the exact definition of things in football can vary from team to team, referee to referee, and stat site to stat site.
What is a catch?
What is a catchable pass?
What is a target?
What constitutes a football move?
What does getting a foot down mean?
What is a QB pressure?
That last question is what we are going to focus on in this article. QB pressures didn’t used to be tabulated. Sacks for individual defenders didn’t either, but the NFL started tracking sacks in 1982. The generally excepted definitions of pass rushing are thus:
A sack is agreed upon - the defender who tackles the QB behind the line of scrimmage on a passing play gets credit for the sack. If two players are tackling the QB at the same time, both get half a sack. If three defenders are involved the official scorer gets to choose which two get the credit. If the QB is attempting to pass and runs out of bounds behind the LOS, then the closest pass rusher gets credit for the sack. Simple, right? But what about when the QB scrambles and is tackled at the LOS (gain of zero). Is that a sack? Should that be counted as a TFL? (answer - no). So even sacks are not as simple as they might seem at first glance.
QB knockdown - this is a situation where the defender hits the QB legally after the ball has been thrown and knocks down the QB.
A QB Hit is similar to a knockdown except that the QB does not get knocked down.
A QB hurry is when the defender is close enough to force the QB to throw before he wants to.
A QB pressure is when the defender is close enough to the QB to force him to alter his throw or to tuck the ball and run.
A pressure is the most extensive. A hurry, hit, knockdown or sack all count as a pressure.
A hit counts as a hurry, and a pressure.
A knockdown counts as a hurry, hit and pressure.
However, a sack does not count as a hurry, hit or knockdown.
Confused yet?
Patrick Surtain rushed the passer once in 2025. He had a hit, which also counted as a hurry, but obviously he could only get one pressure since he only rushed the passer once.
Riley Moss rushed the passer three times. He had a sack, but on his other two pass rushes he get no pressure. Notice that in the table above, Moss has zeroes in the hurry, hit and knockdown columns.
Jordan Turner rushed the passer twice. He had one pressure. The one pressure was a knockdown, so he got credited with a hurry, and a hit on that one pass rush, along with the credit for the knockdown. On his other pass rush he got credit for nothing since he failed to get pressure.
Jahdae Barron rushed the passer 9 times and got zero pressures on his pass rushes. Among Bronco defenders he was the least effective DB when rushing the passer. For comparison, Ja’Quan McMillian rushed the passer 34 times and got pressure on 9 of those.
PFR gives Zach Allen Credit for 50 pressures and 32 knockdowns, while SIS gives him credit for 65 pressures and 34 knockdowns. For Nik Bonitto PFR gives him credit for only 39 pressures and 10 knockdowns while SIS shows 74 and 12. So the knockdowns are pretty close (since that fairly cut and dry), but the pressures are dramatically different for Bonitto and significantly different for Allen.
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/den/2025\_advanced.htm
Nik Bonitto was on the field for 454 passing plays but he only rushed the passer on 387 of them - meaning that he dropped into coverage 67 times - 14.8% of the time on passing plays. Jonathan Cooper only dropped into coverage 12.9% of the time on passing plays. Both of our primary backup OLBs, Jonah Elliss and Dondrea Tillman dropped into coverage about 17% of the time. It was quite rare, but Vance Joseph would drop one of our DT/DE guys into coverage about 1% of the time, so we would see this about once per game. They combined for 18 instances of dropping into coverage during the regular season with Zach Allen having the most at six.
All three of our ILBs who played were effective when they were asked to rush the passer. Justin Strnad got pressure on 26.9% of his pass rushes while Alex Singleton and Dre Greenlaw got 24.7 and 17.4% respectively.
SIS datahub is much more willing to give out pressures than PFR. According to SIS the pressure rate in the NFL in 2025 was 49.5%. According to PFR it is 24.1%.
By PFR the Broncos had the second highest pressure rate in the NFL in 2025 at 30.5%. According to SIS, the Broncos were also second at 59.6%. PFR has the Cowboys first while SIS has the Vikings first.
According to SIS, the average passing play saw 4.5 defenders rushing the passer. What this doesn’t tell us is how often teams only rushed three defenders and or how often teams sent six or even seven guys.
The Broncos had 3016 individual pass rushes, on which they got 394 pressures. PFR shows the Broncos with 213 pressures. SIS shows the Broncos with 216 QBhits while PFR shows 164.
One explanation for this discrepancy could be that SIS can give one pressure to two players on the same play. Similarly they could do the same for hits and hurries. That would mean that SIS is better for evaluating how effective an individual pass rusher was in a season, but that it would overestimate team pass rush effectiveness. No objective observer would say that the Vikings were better at rushing the passer in 2025 than the Broncos, yet SIS data concludes that.
On the flipside, it’s hard to conclude that the Cowboys were better at rushing the passer in 2025 than the Broncos. They literally had half as many sacks. While PFR shows that they had 317 pressures on 590 dropbacks (passing attempts + sacks), they were THE worst team in the NFL at converting pressures into sacks. They also had the second worst pass defense in the league, so that definitely contributed to the ineffectiveness of their pass rush converting pressures into sacks (or 3rd down stops).
All data in the data below was scrubbed from SISdatahub.com
876 different defenders had at least one pass rush in 2025 according to SIS. 718 of them had at least one pressure. The least effective pass rusher in the NFL in 2025 was Mike Pennel of the Bengals. He rushed the passer 58 times and got zero pressures.
What is an edge is also a confusing question that you can read about here.
The team that had the most pass rushes from their of-the-ball LBs in 2025 was the Seahawks - 1414 times. Compare that to the Texans at 85. SIS classifies Bonitto as a LB (as they do for all edge guys) while PFR calls him an OLB in some places and a DE in others.
No team blitzed their CBs more than 61 times (Chiefs). The Browns only blitzed CBs 8 times in 2025.
The Bears blitzed with their safeties the most in the NFL in 2025 - 119 times. The Eagles only sent their safeties after the QB six times.