nfl quarterback tiers – Syndication Server

NFL conference championship quarterback rankings: Lamar Jackson reigns, Patrick Mahomes isn’t where you’d expect

The presumptive 2023 MVP is No. 1. Then what?

You can’t win a Super Bowl in the modern NFL without a good quarterback. Fortunately for the four teams remaining as the conference championship games loom, four good-to-great passers remain.

Unsurprisingly, the guy headed into the gridiron’s final four with the most momentum is its presumptive regular season MVP. Lamar Jackson finished 2023 as a first-team All-Pro, typically the prerequisite to the league’s top individual award. He harnessed that momentum into a gorgeous performance in the divisional round, ending the Houston Texans’ Cinderella story in a 31-10 win.

If Jackson is the top quarterback remaining in the playoffs, how does the rest of the field sort out? Fortunately, we’ve got data that can help us sort through the remaining three candidates.

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.

Because the playoffs are as much about how hot you are as how good your team has been, let’s limit the scope of our data. Rather than limit ourselves to the too-wide net of all of 2023 or the too-small sample size of this year’s playoffs, let’s scoop our numbers from the final six weeks of the regular season on. Plotting that data gives us a 34-quarterback sample size that looks like this:

That’s entirely too busy for our purposes, so let’s eliminate all the guys who aren’t playing this weekend. Poorly and with garbage photoshop skills, as is tradition.

Let’s see how everyone rates when sorted by a composite of EPA and completion percentage over expected (CPOE). The guy at No. 1 won’t surprise you. The guy at No. 4 might.

NFL QB Rankings, Week 11: Stats say to trust Brock Purdy and Josh Allen, which, no.

Purdy and Allen are 1-2 in this week’s rankings, even if neither are top five MVP candidates.

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.

NFL QB Rankings, Week 9: The Raiders paid $72 million for one of the league’s worst passers

Joe Burrow and Jalen Hurts are rising up the ranks. Garoppolo? Hooo buddy, no.

Jimmy Garoppolo is a problem.

He always kinda has been, but San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was able to mitigate his inability to throw downfield and penchant for tossing wild, interceptable passes on short routes by surrounding him with playmakers. With guys like Deebo Samuel, George Kittle and Brandon Aiyuk on the roster he was able to help push the Niners to three conference title games in four years.

The Las Vegas Raiders tried to replicate that success, knowing it had a specific ceiling but understanding fully the struggle of landing a franchise quarterback on the open market. It had a ready-made crutch for Garoppolo’s worst throws in Davante Adams, who is about as good a bailout artist as you’ll find in the NFL.

But Adams, through no fault of his own, has just 14 catches in his last four weeks, forced to watch a near-sighted passer throw well outside his field of vision. Las Vegas is 2-2 in these games, but that’s more a function of having played the two-win Green Bay Packers and New England Patriots in back-to-back weeks. Before getting rolled by the Detroit Lions — a game where Adams had seven targets and one catch — the Raiders also snuck in an 18-point loss to Tyson Bagent and the Chicago Bears.

Garoppolo didn’t play against Chicago (and he won’t against the New York Giants in Week 9, because he’s been benched), but he averaged just 165 passing yards per game in the other three contests. He threw more interceptions (three) than touchdowns (two) and lost 70 yards via sack. His expected points added (EPA) in that span is -0.201 per play — worse than any other starter but Joshua Dobbs and Zach Wilson. Advanced stats paint him as one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL this fall. And that’s what the Raiders, now coach-less after (justifiably) firing Josh McDaniels, owe $11 million — and a $28 million salary cap — to in 2024.

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 32 primary quarterbacks — the ones who played at least 128 snaps in eight 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 seven-layer system that looks like this:

NFL QB Rankings, Week 8: Brock Purdy, Patrick Mahomes and the 4 man race to be 2023’s best QB

Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Tua Tagovailoa and Brock Purdy are locked in battle for the top spot.

Brock Purdy and Tua Tagovailoa backslid in Week 7. Now Patrick Mahomes has them in his sights.

The reigning MVP’s steady climb up the advanced stats rankings continued after a comfortable 14-point win over the Los Angeles Chargers Sunday. By leaning on Travis Kelce and Rashee Rice, Mahomes proved he’s still elite — and the numbers back it up.

He vaulted into third place in this week’s rankings thanks to a 424-yard, four touchdown performance — the fifth 400-yard, four-plus touchdown game of his career to date. Ahead of him lie Purdy and Josh Allen, two quarterbacks who failed to win as road favorites last week but turned in performances that, at the very least, looked decent on the stat sheet despite missed opportunities. With Tagovailoa close behind, these are the four players advanced stats suggest are frontrunners for this year’s MVP race.

Let’s talk about those numbers. 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 112 snaps in seven 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 seven-layer system that looks like this:

NFL QB Rankings, Week 7: Tua Tagovailoa usurps Brock Purdy at No. 1

And Jared Goff emerges as a top five quarterback once more.

The San Francisco 49ers’ Week 6 loss was Tua Tagovailoa’s gain.

The fourth-year quarterback, on pace for career highs of 5,300 passing yards and 40 touchdowns, has regained his place at the top of the quarterback rankings … at least for now. His shiny traditional stats — he ranks first or tied for first in total yardage, touchdown passes and passer rating — also translate to advanced stats. So when Purdy backslid to the worst day of his budding NFL career in rainy Cleveland, Tagovailoa was there to take advantage.

That duo, along with Josh Allen, make up a narrow top tier of quarterbacks through six weeks. The gap between them and the rest of the league’s top passers, however, has gotten smaller in a season where aerial offenses haven’t quite lived up to the NFL’s recent standard. So while Tagovailoa has the edge for now, there’s always the chance Patrick Mahomes (of course) or Jared Goff (whoa) could catch them while building a convincing MVP argument.

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 96 snaps in six 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 seven-layer system that looks like this:

NFL QB Rankings, Week 6: Joe Burrow, no longer the league’s worst quarterback

That leaves Mac Jones and Kenny Pickett at the bottom.

Brock Purdy emerged as the NFL’s most efficient quarterback after Week 4. Then he faced a dominant Dallas Cowboys defense and strengthened his grip on the top spot.

Purdy carved up the Cowboys on Sunday Night Football, roasting the ersatz NFC contenders with 252 passing yards and four touchdowns on only 24 attempts. Meanwhile, Dak Prescott struggled against a smothering San Francisco defense and merely “good” performances from Josh Allen and Tua Tagovailoa helped the second-year pro and former 262nd overall pick widen his lead over the field.

So who else might catch him? Fortunately, we’ve got the data to learn who might be charging into his rear view.

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 80 snaps in five 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 seven-layer system that looks like this:

NFL QB Rankings, Week 4: Joe Burrow stays tethered to the bottom

Meanwhile, Brock Purdy ascends as 2023’s most efficient player … for now.

Two things stand about about the NFL’s quarterback pecking order after four weeks. Brock Purdy probably can’t be this good. And Joe Burrow certainly isn’t this bad.

Purdy has ascended to the top spot in the rankings, supplanting Tua Tagovailoa following Sunday’s weak showing against a brutal Buffalo Bills defense. He’s utilizing his playmakers to perfection and, importantly, making his deep shots count, connecting on all five of his throws of 10-plus yards in a rout of the Cardinals — and winging all five completions to a rising Brandon Aiyuk.

Burrow, sputtering engine behind the 1-3 Cincinnati Bengals, has moved in the opposite direction. He has a single completion on only 10 passes that have traveled at least 20 yards downfield and is completing only 31.5 percent of his throws that make it 10-plus yards from the line of scrimmage. A nagging calf injury has left him a mess and stars like Ja’Marr Chase underutilized and frustrated.

We’re roughly a quarter of the way through the 2023 regular season and there’s plenty of time for things to change. But as it stands Purdy looks like the second coming of Tom Brady and a hobbled Burrow is playing like slightly shorter Brock Osweiler. This would be very difficult to explain to someone just a year ago, yet here we are. The NFL is a weird place, man.

What about the 32 players between them in the rankings? We’ve got advanced stats that can tell us where they stand after four games.

Let’s talk about these numbers. 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 64 snaps in four 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:

NFL QB Rankings, Week 3: Joe Burrow, the league’s least efficent passer

Per advanced stats, Burrow is the worst starting quarterback of 2023. It can’t last … right?

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:

NFL QB Rankings, Week 2: Deshaun Watson, Justin Fields and Zach Wilson race to the bottom

And the numbers tell us Russell Wilson is playing like a top five quarterback (and thus make us doubt the numbers).

Week 2 marked Tua Tagovailoa’s ascension to betting favorite in the 2023 NFL MVP race. The advanced stats agree — albeit across a small sample size.

Tagovailoa has been this season’s most efficient quarterback, even after the New England Patriots knocked him off his torrid Week 1 pace in a 24-17 Miami victory Sunday night. While that’s a bit of a surprise, it may not be as shocking as the quarterbacks who sit in third and fourth place through two games: 1-1 Jimmy Garoppolo and the man he beat to get that lone win, Russell Wilson.

So yes, the data isn’t quite bulletproof as we use advanced stats to get a better picture of which quarterbacks are outplaying expectations this fall. Garoppolo’s short-pass, risk-averse style has always performed well in terms of expected points added (EPA), and after getting a boost from the San Francisco 49ers’ core of playmaking targets he’s now got a rocket in the form of Davante Adams strapped to him. Garoppolo had just a 40.9 passer rating when targeting any Raiders not named Adams and threw two interceptions on short passes intended for his running backs. He doesn’t belong here.

Neither does Wilson, whose cold finishes have left the Broncos foundering once again. No quarterback in the league is more efficient in the first two quarters of the game, where the veteran’s 0.628 EPA/play is by far the best in the league. In the final two quarters that number drops to -0.081: 24th-best among starters.

Let’s talk about these stats. 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, considers the impact of penalties and does not negatively impact passers for fumbles after a completion.

The other piece of the puzzle is 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 32 primary quarterbacks — the ones who played at least 32 snaps in Weeks 1 and 2 — 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 seven-layer system that looks like this (plus whatever Jordan Love is doing in the upper left corner):

With a slightly larger sample size at play, this week’s rankings will sort this year’s qualified quarterbacks by a composite of their EPA and CPOE scores. Tua Tagovailoa stands at the top. Zach Wilson is the anchor at the bottom. Here’s how each passer sorts out in between.

The way-too-early 2023 NFL quarterback tiers, from Patrick Mahomes on his own level to the Bucs’ mess

The reigning MVP comes first — but there’s staunch competition for his throne, especially from within the AFC.

Across the landscape of quarterbacks, everyone’s looking up at Patrick Mahomes.

That’s the only logical takeaway following a season in which the Kansas City Chiefs star took home a Super Bowl title and won NFL MVP honors. And he did it all with a rebuilt receiving corps that no longer featured Tyreek Hill.

That places him on a level unto himself when it comes to 2023’s presumptive starting quarterbacks, but there are contenders to his throne. This fall will be the backdrop to Aaron Rodgers’ attempt to emulate Tom Brady’s late career success, potential revivals from broken veterans once traded for king’s ransoms and vital steps forward for young, emerging passers.

We know who rules that kingdom. We also know who is firmly among the serf class (hello, Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ quarterbacks). But the ground between them is fertile with possibilities. So, with more than three months to go until the start of the 2023 NFL season, let’s take a too-early attempt to break each of these starters into proper tiers.

Tiers below are weighed on a player’s age, past performance and 2022 output. Once separated into a tier, they’re listed in no particular order.