At the time the formula was devised, it established average percentages for the different categories based on what was known then. The most glaring is the average completion percentage of 50.0, which is a far cry from the 2023 league average of 64.5.
As for technology, the league used a booklet to manually tabulate passer rating and it was never intended to be used in games. In fact, official game statistics did not include passer rating until 1997.
The recent story focused on quarterbacks that have reached the 158.3 rating plateau in games. However, not sufficiently explored were game passer ratings that should have been higher than achieved, but failed to reach that number. For that to happen, the player has to reach or go above the maximum percentage in three categories: completion percentage (77.5), average yards per attempt (12.5) and touchdown percentage (11.9).
However, it’s possible that a quarterback could go much higher than the max figure in one category, not get there in the others, but still be over 158.3 or at least higher than what was listed as official. In fact, there are more than 300 of those instances where a player would be over 158.3 if the system was “opened up.” There must be many, many more that fall short of 158.3.
Which brings us to Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels, who will be in State Farm Stadium Sunday to play against the Cardinals. In Monday night’s win over the Cincinnati Bengals, Daniels’ “official” passer rating was 141.7. However, he set an all-time rookie record by completing 91.3 percent of his passes in the game. Unfortunately for him, there is no credit in his passer rating for going over the max percentage of 77.5 in the formula.
How does that make any sense? Obviously, it doesn’t.
According to BAPR (Balzer Adjusted Passer Rating), that 91.3 figure wouldn’t be good enough to get him to or beyond the 158.3 barrier, but it does increase his BAPR for the game to 153.1.
As detective Joe Friday actually said in the iconic TV series Dragnet, “All we want are the facts.” Anyone can try, but you can’t argue about them.
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