NFL Week 3 Quarterback Rankings

Allen sits atop QB rankings once again: The Buffalo Bills‘ Josh Allen leads the analytical quarterback rankings for the second straight week, combining the best PFF grading and advanced stats efficiency.

Hurts and Tagovailoa see big jumps: Philadelphia Eagles QB Jalen Hurts jumps up to second place in the rankings, and Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa moved all the way from 13th to third.

Poor performers: Indianapolis Colts‘ Matt Ryan, Chicago Bears‘ Justin Fields, Carolina Panthers‘ Baker Mayfield and Las Vegas Raiders‘ Derek Carr have the four worst performances among starting quarterbacks this season.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

For these rankings, I utilize a statistical technique called Bayesian Updating to solve the sample size issues. It is a method PFF has used many times in the past, notably when we looked at a number of different draft classes and why the New York Jets needed to draft a quarterback in 2021.

With Bayesian Updating, we can use the dynamics of the historical quarterback market and individual results to project their PFF grades and expected points added (EPA) per play. Even in a single season, there can be drastic differences in sample sizes for quarterbacks. This means that comparing unadjusted rate stats side by side can give too much credit to those who aren’t a big part of their offense and too little credit for those who dominate as their team's No. 1.

You can find details of how Bayesian Updating is implemented here, including a primer on how we build a posterior belief (or projection) based on historical quarterback results and then update the beliefs (projections) for each quarterback with their actual NFL results on a play-by-play basis.

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CONTEXTUALIZE 2022 PERFORMANCE

Before I dive straight into the PFF analytical quarterback rankings, I’ve provided some visualizations to give proper context to how these quarterbacks performed in PFF grade and EPA per play and some important data splits that show the potential for regression moving forward.

Josh Allen has the best PFF offensive grade and efficiency in terms of EPA per play. Jalen Hurts has the second highest grade, and Patrick Mahomes is second in efficiency, but his PFF grade ranks ninth.