How we got there: The ghost in the pocket

We asked: who leaves clean pockets, and what does it cost?

Strange fact that started it: across 2023 to 2025, charters recorded 4,203 sacks and exactly two from a clean pocket. By the time a sack lands there is always pressure to record, so we measured the moment before: every scramble or throwaway on a dropback charted as unpressured (screens and trick plays excluded). A bail that gained expected points is creation; one that lost them is panic.

Within a season, does panic travel with sacks? The cell below runs the same-season association between panic rate and sack rate, live, across all charted QB seasons with 150+ clean dropbacks.

The year-over-year claims need a season self-join (this view is one row per QB season): creation repeats at r 0.65, panic at only 0.19, yet panic predicts next-season sack rate at 0.28 against a 0.15 sack-rate autocorrelation. Suggestive, not proven, on 52 pairs; the bootstrap and the 2026 pre-registered re-test are in the article backtest block. The view is public, so anyone can extend the join.