Career Passer Ratings, an alternate approach

by tom slick on Oct 5, 2009 12:12 AM EDT Comment 11 comments

If you want to tick me off, simply show me a list of the NFL's all-time leaders in career Passer Rating. It's an absolute travesty! You'll find Chad Pennington is ranked higher than Roger Staubach. Jake Delhomme's higher than Sonny Jurgensen and Len Dawson. Brian Griese's "better" than Bart Starr, Dan Fouts and John Elway? Oh, the humanity! What can we, as football fans, DO to repair this injustice, America?

As we all know, the game has changed mightily over the years, with ever-increasing emphasis on the passing game. As a result, Passer Rating numbers have steadily grown as well (from a mean of 59.4 in 1946, to 84.8 last year, up 43%). Naturally, this skews the career numbers toward the more modern QBs that put up higher numbers on average.

I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this, but... it occurred to me that it might be more accurate to adjust the yearly data to correct for this skewing effect. To do this, I calculated the mean Passer Rating (among qualifiers listed at NFL.com) for each year 1946-2008. Then, for each year I created a multiplier to "inflate" that year's Passer Ratings to 2008 levels. For example, for 1946 the multiplier is 1.43 (84.8 divided by 59.4). Each qualifying QB has his PR multiplied by 1.43 for that year, to yield an Adjusted Passer Rating.

After sorting the 1400+ lines of data, I selected all QBs with 5 or more qualifying seasons and averaged each man's yearly Adjusted Ratings to get a composite career number. Here's my top 50, which I find much more plausible than the unadjusted numbers, though obviously not perfect by any means:

Rank	Composite Adjusted Passer Rating	Player	Last Tm	Last Yr
1	110.4	Otto Graham	CLE	1955
2	106.6	Steve Young	SF	1998
3	105.4	Roger Staubach	DAL	1979
4	102.1	Len Dawson	KC	1974
5	101.8	Joe Montana	KC	1994
6	101.5	Sonny Jurgensen	WAS	1970
7	100.4	Norm Van Brocklin	PHI	1960
8	99.6	Bart Starr	GB	1970
9	99.4	Peyton Manning	IND	2008
10	99.2	Kurt Warner	ARI	2008
11	98.5	Milt Plum	DET	1965
12	98.5	Johnny Unitas	BAL	1970
13	98.0	Bert Jones	BAL	1981
14	98.0	Fran Tarkenton	MIN	1978
15	97.2	Daunte Culpepper	MIN	2004
16	97.0	Frank Ryan	CLE	1967
17	96.1	Tom Brady	NE	2007
18	95.9	Bobby Thomason	PHI	1955
19	95.8	Ken Anderson	CIN	1984
20	95.7	Greg Landry	BAL	1979
21	95.4	Daryle Lamonica	OAK	1972
22	93.9	Dan Marino	MIA	1999
23	93.8	Bob Griese	MIA	1979
24	93.7	Trent Green	KC	2005
25	93.5	Dan Fouts	SD	1987
26	93.4	Chad Pennington	MIA	2008
27	93.3	Don Meredith	DAL	1968
28	93.0	Ben Roethlisberger	PIT	2008
29	92.7	Randall Cunningham	MIN	1998
30	92.2	Jim Kelly	BUF	1996
31	92.2	Y.A. Tittle	NYG	1964
32	91.3	Ken Stabler	NO	1983
33	91.1	Drew Brees	NO	2008
34	91.0	Jeff Garcia	TB	2008
35	90.9	Donovan McNabb	PHI	2008
36	90.9	Brett Favre	NYJ	2008
37	90.8	Danny White	DAL	1987
38	90.3	Charlie Conerly	NY	1959
39	90.2	Craig Morton	DEN	1981
40	90.2	Joe Theismann	WAS	1985
41	90.2	Ken O'Brien	NYJ	1991
42	90.1	Dave Krieg	CHI	1996
43	90.0	Billy Wade	CHI	1964
44	89.8	Chris Chandler	ATL	2001
45	89.8	Brian Griese	CHI	2007
46	89.7	John Brodie	SF	1971
47	89.3	Neil O'Donnell	CIN	1998
48	89.2	Neil Lomax	PHO	1988
49	89.2	Jeff Hostetler	OAK	1996
50	89.2	Bernie Kosar	CLE	1991
53	89.0	Steve Bartkowski	ATL	1984
59	88.3	Bobby Hebert	ATL	1996
119	72.2	Joey Harrington	ATL	2007

I posted a copy of my spreadsheet here in case anyone wants to see more data. It's a 900+ KB file, so it may take a few minutes with a dial-up connection. Cheers to all you old QBs out there!

This FanPost was written by one of The Falcoholic's talented readers. It does not necessarily reflect the views of The Falcoholic.

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Comments

Sweet Fancy Moses

That’s awesome work! Utterly bizarre to see Milt Plum that high on the list, though.

by Dave the Falconer on Oct 5, 2009 12:30 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

There's a vast anti-Milt Plum conspiracy out there, people...

He, Ryan and Thomason kinda polluted the top 20, I should have cooked the books! Thanks Dave.

by tom slick on Oct 5, 2009 1:06 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Glad to do it

And glad to have more ammo to assert that Joe Namath was in no way a got-dang Hall of Fame quarterback.

by Dave the Falconer on Oct 5, 2009 1:09 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Looks good

The original list sure cheated the older guys. Can’t dl your file, any ideas?

Yep, I remember 'hemorrhage', and 'embolism', and even 'detached retina'...
It sounded scary, but when you smell the goal line, they're only words. Just words.

by Bill Dauterive on Oct 5, 2009 1:53 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Thanks

The download works OK for me. In your web browser, be sure cookies are enabled for the domain www.filedropper.com.

by tom slick on Oct 5, 2009 12:00 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

FileDropper

The website created by Najeh Davenport.

by Dave the Falconer on Oct 5, 2009 12:02 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Great work

by orang3b on Oct 5, 2009 8:04 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

A couple of hours copying and pasting

flies by when you’re drinking the right brand of paint thinner. Thanks!

by tom slick on Oct 5, 2009 12:09 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Funny

Chris Chandler was really good in 2001, and still lost his job.

by Bronn on Oct 5, 2009 10:24 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

If you like comparing all-time great QB’s

P-F-R is always up to something… Recently, they Ranked QB’s by their Peak (6 best seasons). Bartkowski was ATL’s highest ranked QB at #64. Matt Ryan was #78 (because of his one really great year), Chandler was #79 (with 4 seasons in ATL included), Bob Berry #87, and kciV was #145.

Number one is a surprise, and a few others seem out of place, but overall it’s a pretty good list. Very interesting read…

by orang3b on Oct 7, 2009 1:04 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Good link, thanks

Didn’t realize PFR did those. Using peak seasons has a lot of advantages. When you use career numbers, the “Milt Plum” effect seems hard to get rid of, no matter how you weigh the data.

by tom slick on Oct 7, 2009 3:57 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs