In a season without a clear MVP favorite, you can make the case for just about anyone.
Advanced statistics, after 10 weeks, are behind the San Francisco 49ers’ Brock Purdy and Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen. That’s certainly … one argument you could make.
In a season without a top dog, Purdy’s ability to operate within Kyle Shanahan’s offense and Allen’s ability to balance out his worst instincts with explosive throws and game-changing runs have given them a statistical edge. But neither looks like an MVP, particularly since both have lost three of their last four games. In fact, most betting markets don’t even have them in the top five.
That either means these two are undervalued — possible — or that advanced stats can’t quantify what makes a player great. It’s probably a combination of those two, but this week’s results certainly lean harder toward the latter.
Let’s talk about those stats. Expected points added (EPA) is a concept that’s been around since 1970. It’s effectively a comparison between what an average quarterback could be expected to do on a certain down and what he actually did — and how it increased his team’s chances of scoring. The model we use comes from The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin and his RBSDM.com website, which is both wildly useful AND includes adjusted EPA, which accounts for defensive strength. It considers the impact of penalties and does not negatively impact passers for fumbles after a completion.
The other piece of the puzzle is completion percentage over expected (CPOE), which is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s a comparison of all the completions a quarterback would be expected to make versus the ones he actually did. Like EPA, it can veer into the negatives and higher is better. So if you chart all 33 primary quarterbacks — the ones who played at least 160 snaps in 10 weeks — you get a chart that looks like this:
Top right hand corner is good. Bottom left corner is bad. Try splitting those passers visually into tiers and you get an imperfect eight-layer system that looks like this:
These rankings are sorted by a composite of adjusted EPA and CPOE to better understand who has brought the most — and the least — value to their teams across the small sample size. It’s not a full exploration of a player’s value, but it’s a viable starting point. Let’s take a closer look.