Historical Quarterback Season Ranking

I’ll save the gory details for another post, but in the table below you’ll see every QB season since 1950 with at least 50 plays. Points Above Average uses league average as its baseline while Points Above Replacement uses a baseline that’s 80% of league average. The former is best for measuring how much a QB contributed to winning, while the latter tells us how much value a QB had compared to the theoretical worst starter in the league. Adjustments are made for league QB play volume in an effort to put older seasons on relatively equal footing with recent years.

These numbers are derived from regular season boxscore stats with estimates used in years lacking full data coverage. The stat categories are weighted toward being predictive rather than descriptive, which leads to some deviation from other stat based rankings. Here is the base formula I used, which is then translated into a points estimate:

(Pass1D + PassTD + CAY/25 - Sack*1.5 - INT*2 - FUM*2 + Rush1D + RushTD + RushYd/25) / (PassAtt + Sack + RushAtt)¹

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• Completed Air Yards (CAY) are estimated prior to 1992 by assuming 60% of passing yards came through the air while 40% came after the catch.

• Passing First Downs (Pass1D) are estimated prior to 1981 by assigning team Pass1D to QB’s in proportion to their share of gross passing yards on their team.

• Rushing First Downs (Rush1D) are estimated prior to 1991 using the formula (RushAtt/3.2 + RushYd/13) / 2.

• Rushing yards per carry are set to a minimum of 3 YPC for every QB season so QB’s who have a lot of kneel downs aren’t punished too severely. This adjustment is not used when estimating Rush1D using the formula above.

• Fumbles (FUM) includes all QB fumbles, both lost and recovered, since fumble recoveries are completely random.