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With all our talk about quarterbacks recently, I've been thinking about something to replace/enhance the QB rating we have today. I mean, I think it's an OK tool, but there's got to be something better. Here's how the current tool works.
Basically, there are four "rules" that are equally rated: completion percentage, yards/attempt, TD percentage, interception percentage. No rule can be greater than 2.375.
Russell Wilson led the NFL in QB rating last year, and his scores break out like the following:
- Rule 1 (completion percentage) - 1.9057
- Rule 2 (yards/attempt) - 1.3328
- Rule 3 (TD percentage) - 1.4078
- Rule 4 (interception percentage) - 1.9609
(1.9057+1.3328+1.4078+1.9609)/6 = 1.1012 * 100 = 110.1
OK, I get that one needs to make some equalizations, but much of it seems rather arbitrary. So....let's be more arbitrary!
My proposal is that we look at the standard deviations of the stats above (taking the inverse of interception percentage), measure against the mean, and add up the totals (multiplying the totals would make any differences even more drastic). In this case, 0 means a dead on average QB. Here's the new list (QBR Rank is their QB rating):
| Name | StD Total | QBR Rank |
| Russell Wilson | 5.78 | 1 |
| Andy Dalton | 4.75 | 2 |
| Carson Palmer | 4.28 | 3 |
| Kirk Cousins | 3.54 | 5 |
| Drew Brees | 3.45 | 6 |
| Tom Brady | 3.41 | 4 |
| Tyrod Taylor | 2.85 | 7 |
| Cam Newton | 2.27 | 8 |
| Matthew Stafford | 1.88 | 9 |
| Alex Smith | 1.71 | 10 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 1.66 | 11 |
| Philip Rivers | 1.10 | 12 |
| Josh McCown | 1.00 | 14 |
| Jay Cutler | 0.81 | 16 |
| Eli Manning | 0.72 | 13 |
| Aaron Rodgers | 0.37 | 15 |
| Marcus Mariota | 0.25 | 17 |
| Brian Hoyer | 0.13 | 18 |
| Matt Ryan | 0.04 | 20 |
| Derek Carr | -0.06 | 19 |
| Teddy Bridgewater | -0.15 | 21 |
| Ryan Tannehill | -0.39 | 22 |
| Brock Osweiler | -0.94 | 25 |
| Sam Bradford | -1.01 | 26 |
| Blaine Gabbert | -1.05 | 27 |
| Blake Bortles | -1.06 | 23 |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | -1.21 | 24 |
| Jameis Winston | -1.74 | 28 |
| Matt Hasselbeck | -1.91 | 29 |
| Joe Flacco | -1.98 | 30 |
| Colin Kaepernick | -3.37 | 31 |
| Andrew Luck | -5.33 | 32 |
| Nick Foles | -6.35 | 33 |
| Peyton Manning | -6.66 | 34 |
| Ryan Mallett | -6.82 | 35 |
There aren't many changes between the two lists, but I can glean more from this data. For example, Matt Ryan and Derek Carr are the gold standards on being an average NFL quarterback. Nick Foles, Peyton Manning, and our beloved Ryan MalletT were worse than Russell Wilson was good last year. Those three also bent the curve terribly on several stats, most notably Peyton's interception rate and Mallett's completion percentage and yards/attempt.
Any deep thoughts out there?
Consider this your Saturday Night Open Thread, aka SNOT. Usual open thread rules apply, so please be kind to each other.