Dr. Z Doesn’t Like The Passer Rating System, Young Punks

If you've been reading for a while, you know that SI's Dr. Z annoys me sometimes with his "Things were so much better before fire" attitude towards football. There's a lot to be said for the old days. The game was more brutal and therefore more fun to watch, there was less player douchiness and diva-ism, "playing both ways" had a much cooler meaning, and nicknames were earned instead of self-imposed. But science along with an ever-increasing public interest of the game has made today's football players better than those from the previous eras. The players from the 1920s to the 1960s didn't have the training and steroids and nutrition and steroids and constant coaching and steroids that modern players all have access to. Oh, and we have steroids now.

This time around, Z goes off on a rant about the passer rating system and how mysterious and spooky it is and how it needs to be adjusted so players from past eras can look better.

Achievements have gone way above the old standards, but Elias has maintained that same system for 35 years, with the same benchmarks and the same schedule of rewards. The passing game has changed dramatically, but Elias plods on, stuck in its standards of 1973, when its system came in.

I know what Z is looking for. He wants a system that properly acknowledges the quarterbacks of the past and yet still gives Tom Brady and Peyton Manning their due. But what the current rating system measures are still the most important tangibles to a passer: completions, yards, touchdowns and interceptions. Remember, this is not a quarterback rating system. It does not measure leadership, grittiness, the ability to audible out of a play at the line, victories or who dates the hottest models. It measures the ability to pass the ball efficiently. That may be why it is called the "passer efficiency rating".

Z's inner-codger was never more obvious than when he spent half of his first page illustrating how complicated the system is and how no one understands it.

... it's a prehistoric monster that no one understands, an illogical piece of antiquity that influences so much of the game when it shouldn't.

Well, folks, I'm about to blow the doors off this motherfucker. I'm going to explain the passer efficiency rating to you. You heard me. I'm going expose the formula to the blinding white light of public scrutiny and peel away the mystery that has shrouded passer ratings for decades. This is like when that mystery dude in the mask revealed how certain magic tricks were done, except with less pyro and chicks in sparkly bikinis and more numbers. I'm cool like that. Ready?

The passer efficiency rating measures exactly four things: completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdowns per attempt and interceptions per attempt. Each of those things is just as important as the other; they are all weighed equally in the formula. The standards are as follows:

• 30% - 77.5% in completion percentage
• 3 - 12.5 in yards per attempt
• 0% - 11.875% in touchdowns per attempt
• 0% - 9.5% in interceptions per attempt

If you rate lower than the lowest numbers in each category, it's the same as a zero. If you rate higher than the highest of those numbers, it's considered perfect. Anything in between is measured proportionally. Then the results are added together (interceptions are subtracted, though, since the lower that number is, the better.) That's really the heart of it.

There is some simple arithmetic used to bring all those measures down to a single standard, and that's the part that usually makes people's eyes glaze over. But none of that stuff affects the rating itself, just how it is represented. The way it is done now, a perfect score is 158.3 (39.58 for each category) and the worst possible score is 0. I don't know why they use that particular scale, but it doesn't matter. All that matters is the four bullet points above.

Now, how useful is it at all? I don't know. A lot of things out of the passer's control can affect the rating. A receiver can catch a 6 yard slant and then run 80 yards for the touchdown and the passer gets credit for the score. He didn't really have much to do with the touchdown, though. And the receiver can also have a perfectly thrown pass deflect off his hands and into a defender's and the passer would be penalized for the interception. You'd like to think those things balance each other out and you're left with at least a decent idea of how well the quarterback is performing as a passer. But, again, that doesn't tell the entire story.

Let's use a Buccaneer example. In 1979, Doug Williams had a passer rating of 51.2 which by today's standards sucks donkey balls. But Williams took few sacks because he was always throwing the ball away when his line couldn't protect him. Williams got the hell beaten out of him on a regular basis but still started every game that year. He was a natural leader in the huddle and his teammates trusted his skills and decision making. The team went to the NFC Championship game and no player on that team would argue that Doug Williams wasn't a major reason why. It's just not evident in his passer rating.

So, Z, just leave the rating alone. For what it's good for, it's fine. And you'll beat your bald head against a wall trying to quantify everything that makes a good quarterback. Do you really think Sammy Baugh or Sid Luckman or Dutch Clark give half a shit what their passer efficiency ratings were? Hell no. They were too busy with booze and hookers to care about anything so trivial.