nfl quarterback tiers – Page 2

NFL Quarterback Rankings, Week 16: Patrick Mahomes extends his lead (and Jalen Hurts can’t catch him)

Mahomes has breathing room between himself and the rest of the NFL’s QBs. Jalen Hurts’ injury may have sealed his crown.

The data backs up what Kansas City Chiefs fans have known for a long, long time. Patrick Mahomes is the most valuable quarterback in the NFL.

Mahomes and Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts have passed the top odds for league’s most valuable player award back and forth throughout the back end of the 2022 season. Now that a reported shoulder sprain seems destined to cut Hurts’ campaign short, it feels like a predetermined result that the man with the $500 million contract will add his second MVP award to an already distinguished resume.

Even a rejuvenated Hurts, or the players directly behind him — Tua Tagovailoa, Joe Burrow, Geno Smith somehow — would have a difficult time catching Mahomes in the advanced stats rankings. The Kansas City star hasn’t just built his castle in 2022 but dug a moat to separate him from the very good quarterbacks trying to usurp his claim.

There’s plenty of intrigue further down the ranks. Both Trevor Lawrence and Jared Goff have overcome uneven 2021 seasons and awful starts to 2022 to lead their teams into the playoff hunt as top 10 passers. Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, well, still kinda stink. And Zach Wilson has been slightly less embarrassing in his role as the Jets’ fill-in starter. For now.

What else do advanced stats tell us about this year’s starting quarterbacks?

We know the data is limited — but it does give us a pretty good idea of who has risen to the occasion this fall. Let’s see which quarterbacks are great and who truly stinks through seven weeks. These numbers are from the NFL’s Next Gen Stats model but compiled by the extremely useful RBSDM.com, run by The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin and Sebastian Carl.

Using expected points added (EPA, the value a quarterback adds on any given play compared to the average NFL result) along with completion percentage over expected (CPOE, the percent of his passes that are caught that aren’t expected to be in typical NFL situations) gives us a scatter plot of 33 quarterbacks (minimum 224 plays) that looks like this:

The size of each dot represents the amount of plays they’ve been a part of. A place in the top right means you’re above average in both EPA and CPOE. A place in the bottom left suggests things have gone horribly wrong (i.e. Baker Mayfield).

There are a lot of players taking up the creamy middle ground and some strange outliers, making it tough to separate this year’s average quarterbacks into tiers. Here’s my crack at it, but full details follow in the text below.

NFL Quarterback Rankings, Week 13: Dak Prescott is a top 3 QB (and that can’t last … right?)

Dak Prescott’s ability to avoid negative plays has him rising. Trevor Lawrence and Derek Carr? Also up. Russell Wilson? Not up. At all.

Dak Prescott is throwing interceptions at a career-worst rate. He’s had five since returning to the Dallas Cowboys’ lineup in Week 7.

But he’s been pretty good in every other facet of the game — including letting his running backs take over — and the Cowboys are 4-1 since then. Prescott is averaging more than 250 passing yards per game and has more touchdowns than turnovers and sacks combined. That’s led him to rise up the advanced stats leaderboard … all the way into third place thanks to a small sample size and some underwhelming opponents.

Prescott will almost certainly backslide at some point, but it might not come in the next three weeks with games against the Indianapolis Colts (who have a decent passing defense, but not top 10), Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars (who do not) on the schedule. Would that be an accurate reflection on the Cowboy quarterback? Probably not, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep building him up in what’s been a more trying season than his numbers suggest.

Other movers this week include Trevor Lawrence (up four spots), Derek Carr (same) and Russell Wilson (down three spots and barely a top 30 quarterback). What else have we learned over 12 weeks of the 2022 NFL season?

Using expected points added (EPA, the value a quarterback adds on any given play compared to the average NFL result) along with completion percentage over expected (CPOE, the percent of his passes that are caught that aren’t expected to be in typical NFL situations) gives us a scatter plot of 34 quarterbacks (minimum 176 plays) that looks like this:

NFL Quarterback Rankings, Week 11: Here’s why Tua Tagovailoa, NFL MVP, sounds about right

Tagovailoa solidified his spot at the top with another sterling performance. Of course, Patrick Mahomes isn’t too far behind.

Tua Tagovailoa is undefeated in games he’s started and finished in 2022. He leads the league in passer rating, touchdown rate and yards per attempt.

And when it comes to advanced stats, he sits on a tier by himself above the league’s other quarterbacks.

Granted, this is a small sample size. Tagovailoa has played roughly 150 fewer snaps than fellow MVP candidates like Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen. His 248 pass attempts barely clears the top 20 in the NFL. His numbers are skewed by a hot streak that’s seen him throw for 969 yards, nine touchdowns and zero interceptions in his last three games.

Even so, this has been a statement season from an embattled quarterback. Tagovailoa’s average pass travels 9.0 yards downfield — fifth-furthest in the league — and he’s still managed to up his completion rate to 71 percent — second-best among starters. This isn’t a case of short throws taken long distances to puff up a stats sheet, Garoppolo-style. It’s an honest revelation.

But it’s not all rainbows. In terms of tape, Tagovailoa can’t match the athleticism and downfield touch of peers like Allen or Mahomes, His deep balls still need refinement. His late struggles against the Chicago Bears in Week 9 didn’t show up in a sparkling stat sheet, but did make that game closer than it should have been.

This leaves a very real chance he regresses — not only because of his past performances but because he’s operating at a ludicrous level higher than Aaron Rodgers landed in either of his MVP seasons in 2020 or 2021. But we’re not worried about that right now. We’re only worried about numbers through Week 10.

That means Tua is king.

Using expected points added (EPA, the value a quarterback adds on any given play compared to the average NFL result) along with completion percentage over expected (CPOE, the percent of his passes that are caught that aren’t expected to be in typical NFL situations) gives us a scatter plot of 39 quarterbacks (minimum 112 plays) that looks like this:

NFL QB Tiers after Week 2: Sure, there’s Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes. Then who?

Advanced stats show a clear pecking order for 2022’s starting quarterbacks — with some surprising results (top 10 Geno Smith???).

We’ve got two weeks of data relating to NFL offenses and the quarterbacks who run them. Let’s overreact.

This limited sample size creates an interesting, if not especially accurate, baseline for QB performance as the 2022 regular season rolls forward. While the league’s best and worst quarterbacks have been obvious, it can be difficult separating the up-and-down play of veterans like Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady or emerging passers like Kyler Murray from a deep pool of players.

Here’s how we’re going to try; by using the league’s advanced stats metrics to better understand who has brought the most value to the position through Week 2. We’ll use numbers to separate these gunslingers into tiers in hopes of better understanding where each team stands.

The data for these tiers comes from the NFL’s Next Gen Stats model but is provided by The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin and his increasingly useful and informative RBSDM.com. Using expected points added (EPA, the value a quarterback adds on any given play compared to the average NFL result) along with completion percentage over expected (CPOE, the percent of his passes that are caught that aren’t expected to be in typical NFL situations) gives us a scatter plot of 33 quarterbacks (minimum 32 plays, thus excluding Jimmy Garoppolo) that looks like this:

A place in the top right means you’re above average in both EPA and CPOE. A place in the bottom left suggests things have gone horribly wrong.

We can break those results into tier to get a better understanding of who sits where in the early season pecking order.

OK, let’s start at the top.