Joe Burrow is not the worst starting quarterback in the NFL. He’s not even close.
But as he limps through a calf injury, he’s playing several leagues below his own standard. And, according to advanced stats, is the league’s least accurate, most damaging passer through three weeks.
These stats don’t have a learning curve. They aren’t measuring Burrow’s toughness and ability while playing through an injury that’s sapped his mobility and left him lagging on the downfield throws he used to be able to step into and deliver on a line. What they do measure is the fact he’s completed just one of 10 deep balls, his average completion distance is down to a minuscule 3.5 yards beyond the line of scrimmage and that, despite throwing shorter passes than all but two other quarterbacks, he’s completing a career-worst 55 percent of his attempts.
Thus, Burrow sinks to the bottom of these rankings despite gritting out a win and being smart enough to let Ja’Marr Chase carry him on a night where he couldn’t be himself. Tua Tagovailoa, on the other hand, has risen to the top by effectively declaring himself Snow Miser in the Miami Dolphins’ blizzard offense. In between are 32 other quarterbacks, ranked and ordered thanks to advanced stats.
Let’s talk about these 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 34 primary quarterbacks — the ones who played at least 48 snaps in three weeks — you get a chart that looks like this:
Top right hand corner is good. Bottom left corner is bad. Try splitting those passers 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.