Bill Belichick seems borderline apathetic toward sacks.

The New England Patriots coach doesn’t seem to measure the success of his defensive linemen with sacks, instead focusing on pressure. The result seems to be that players don’t rack up sacks in the Patriots’ system. Their leading sacker, Deatrich Wise, has just 4.5. Their best defensive end, Trey Flowers, has just 3.5, and he picked up one in the team’s Week 12 win over the New York Jets.

“He’s had a number of hits on the quarterback,” Belichick said of Flowers during an interview on WEEI on Monday. “He had two or three yesterday [against the Jets]. … Like on the interception, we hit [quarterback Josh] McCown just as he was throwing the ball. I don’t know if that affected the throw or not but it’s definitely a good thing.

“I think if you look at the overall passing game, the statistic that stands out the most in terms of correlation is pressure. So pressure on the quarterback leads to more bad plays than sacks do, in terms of turnovers unless you have strip sacks, obviously. That’s the No. 1. After that, pressures cause bad throws and potentially turnovers.”

Belichick noted that the pass rush comes down to team defense, tethering the production of the pass rush to the quality of coverage and vice versa. But his note about focusing on strip sacks and pressure while devaluing sacks is a unique insight. Sacks make players money, but they may not be tied to winning football games. Winning the turnover differential is an enormous part of winning football games. The Los Angeles Rams (+11), New Orleans Saints (+8), Chicago Bears (+14) are in the top five in turnover differential. The Patriots are in the top 10 at +5, a number which is improving as Tom Brady hasn’t thrown an interception since Week 7.

So if pressures are tied to turnovers and turnovers are tied to wins, then Belichick’s emphasis on pressures follow his cliche: “We do what’s best for the team to win games.”

It also explains why some players go on to explode in sack totals when they leave New England, like defensive end Chandler Jones, who had 12.5 sacks in his final year with the Patriots before logging 17.5 in his second year with the Cardinals. Defensive tackle Akiem Hicks had three sacks with the Patriots in 2015 and 8.5 with the Bears in 2017.

It also bodes well for Flowers, who has noted countless times that he doesn’t care about individual statistics despite entering a contract year. Even while unintentionally deflating Flowers’ stats, Belichick may lose the standout defender in free agency.