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QB Rating- For What It’s Worth

The Head Bozo always wondered how they came up with the NFL Quarterback Rating, it seemed somewhat arbitrary. It’s not based on a scale from 0-100, which would make sense. The rating has a scale of 0-158.3 (College has a scale of -731.6 to 1261.6). The ratings pop up on the screen Sundays and it’s never really explained, now I understand why.

In the days of leather helmets and no facemasks, the QB with the most passing yards held the crown of NFL Passing Leader. In the late 1930’s it was the QB with the highest completion percentage. From 1941-1971 it was impossible to accurately rank the QBs performance so in 1971 Commissioner Pete Rozelle asked the League and the Elias Sports stat guys to come up with a formula. At first, 66.7 was the average and a 100+ rating meant an excellent performance. With the steady improvement of QB play (the 2017 average was 88.7) the League statisticians agreed upon a formula.

Here are the four separate calculations made on the data below:

  1. Number of Passing Attempts
  2. Number of Completions
  3. Passing Yds
  4. TDs
  5. Interceptions

a = [(Comp/ Att) – .3]        x 5

b = [(Yds/ Att) -3]             x .25

c = (TD/ Att)                      x 20

d = 2.375 –[ (Int/ Att) x 25)]

Passer Rating = [(a+b+c+d)/6] x 100

Teams with a higher Passing Rating win approximately 80% of the time.

To score a perfect 158.3 you must, at a minimum, have a completion percentage of 77.5%, have at least 12.5 yards per attempt, no interceptions and a passing TD for every 8.421 attempts.

As you can see, this is an intricate system and does not include sacks, rushes, fumbles or performance in the clutch. So it’s really a Passer rating and not a QB rating.

Peyton Manning has the most perfect ratings with four. Roethlisberger and Warner have three each. Chad Pennington is the only QB to post a perfect rating and lose the game.

Aaron Rodgers has the highest passer rating in a season (122.5) and in his career (104.0).

For what it’s worth, HB is just trying to educate the Bozos out there.

You never know, it might come up in conversation one day…, then again….

-HB

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