it IS 3 seconds. after the bucs and the raiders played in the superbowl, THE SPORTING NEWS MAGAZINE did an article in their annual season preview for the next year. it was about how great def beats great off. they mentioned specifically a key factor in that game being how much time the qb had to throw. the average time for a qb to throw was like 3 seconds, according to their study. i believe the raiders qb had an average of 1.somthing secs before he had a guy in his face.