Passer rating is a statistic used in the NFL to determine how a quarterback played but, like a lot of stats, it doesn’t take into account the whole story so ti’s becoming less and less relevant around the league these days.
ESPN Creates New Stat To Replace Passer Rating
ESPN hopes to change that. They’re creating a new statistic alled Total QBR -- Total Quarterback Rating -- that would essentially replace passer rating.
The problem, of course, is that in passer rating, so much is ignored. A series of short completions with big yards after the catch mean the same thing as a series of harder-to-complete long passes. The ESPN formula weighs out the yards after the catch, and weighs in things like lost fumbles in the pocket and sacks taken. And timing. A 17-yard completion in a tie game with two minutes left gets a quarterback more credit than the same completion in the middle of the first quarter -- as it should.
I already like it if it accurately describes situations that King notes. It’s designed to track every play and move that a quarterback has control over. It also makes sense for the grading scale to go from 1-100 -- no more 158.3, which is an odd number for the max passer rating.
Will the NFL world take ahold of Total QBR and run with it? We shall see but I think it’s time someone made a run at replacing passer rating as a stat.
ESPN is hosting a show on Friday night to explain the new stat.
See More:
