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It's party Drew having no mobility, and partly our O-line being god awful in those days.
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Damnit,
tdarko, stop stealing my material. I mean, so much of it is stolen from FO in the first place, and having it re-stolen just feels dirty, for some reason.
A post of mine from
this thread, about 4/5 of the way through:
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An example of this principle, courtesy of PFP 2007. Last year, the Dallas Cowboys started the same five offensive lineman for all 16 games. Drew Bledsoe was sacked once ever 11.6 dropbacks (attempts + sacks), while Tony Romo, behind the same exact line, was sacked just once every 17 dropbacks. The league-wide average was one sack per 15.1 dropbacks. So, did the Cowboys O-line go from attrocious to somewhat above average halfway through the season, or did the team just insert a QB who was much less prone to being sacked?
Note that Bledsoe had a similar sack rate at Buffalo (11.9 att/sack), as well as at New England during his final three years (11.8 att/sack), which is roughly when he turned into The Human Monolith.
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In my defense, I will point out that I did the research about Bledsoe in Buffalo and New England myself.
Anyway, my guess is that the Dallas O-line was (and probably still is) about average at pass protection, so their sack rate was basically going to be a reflection of their QBs' sack avoidance skills. Bledsoe was terrible, Romo is pretty damn good.
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Also don't forget that with Bledsoe, Parcells was forced to use Witten in max-protect. While Cowboys went max-protect with Witten again in the first few quarters vs. Giants tonight, Romo's mobility allows Witten to free up and play like the Pro Bowl TE that he is.