If a quarterback is tackled behind the line of scrimmage while still trying to pass, even if he’s scrambling, it’ll nearly always be counted as a sack (and not as a rush), and the negative yardage counts against the team’s passing yardage.
Only if he’s clearly trying to run the ball as a designed play, and is caught behind the line of scrimmage, would it be classified as a running play for negative yardage – but it’s probably a judgement call, on the part of the scorekeeper.
For example, look at the box score from yesterday’s Packers-Eagles game. Aaron Rodgers passed for 140 yards, and Jordan Love passed for 113 yards, giving the team a total of 253 “gross” passing yards. But, Rodgers was sacked three times, for 17 yards in losses, and the box score shows the Packers with 236 “net” passing yards.
What’s interesting if you look at passing stats throughout out the years is that passing stats are pretty much up across the board in terms of attempts, completion %, and total yards. The top 13 spots in passing yards are all from the last 13 years.
What’s flat though, is yards per attempt. And in yards per completion, we’re all the way at the bottom now. So QBs are doing a lot more shorter passes to gain yards that used to be gained by rushing. If you look at the 500+ yard games, they’re pretty much all above average in yards per attempt and completion percentage. They’re coming from games where the QB is just bombing it down field and hitting it every time.
Wire service accounts of the game confirm that they did not.
Van Brocklin threw a one-yard touchdown pass to Elroy Hirsch early in the fourth quarter that put the Rams ahead 48-14 and tied the existing passing record of 468 yards set by Johnny Lujack in 1949. He remained in the game and completed six more passes for 86 yards in closing out the blowout win.
That wouldn’t happen today, There is a super-strong norm against “running up the score” and “padding your stats” that didn’t exist in 1951. Part of it is risk of injury; no coach (or player or fan) in his right mind wants a $300 million franchise QB risking life and limb to add yardage in a blowout against a crappy team. And part of it the “culture of respect”; with everything broadcast instantly nationwide and analyzed ad nauseum, there’s no upside to disrespecting a crappy team.
Somebody some day will break the record–if that many quarterbacks have gotten to 520 yards, somebody will get to 560. But it will come in a game where they not only can do it, but have a legitimate football need to do it. That pretty much requires a shootout with not one but two crappy pass defenses, and that lengthens the odds against the record falling in any given season.
I don’t know if such a game would be considered a “shootout” … but another way for 554 to be broken is quarterbacking a team to a furious – and frankly, lucky – comeback, even in an ultimately losing effort.
Say two teams are both playing great offensive football, but one team has been especially unlucky. The losing team has passed the ball between the 20s easily, but has turned it over twice and then got held up for a goal-line stand on another possession – and so is down, say, 28-0 at the half.
If that losing team gets a lot of luck and continues chucking the ball all over the yard – and completes a lot of those passes, 300+ yards in a half is very much within reach.