NFL Passer Rating Data
Variables below (from left to right):
Quarterback's last name
Quarterback's first name
Pass attempts
Pass completions
Passing yardage
Touchdowns (TDs)
Interceptions (Ints)
NFL Rating (rounded to the nearest .1)
The data, obtained from the NFL (_The Official NFL 1999 Record & Fact
Book_, Workman Publishing, NY, p.435), are current to the beginning of the
1999-2000 season for those players with at least 1,500 passing attempts.
For more details see the article "How does the NFL rate passers?" which
appeared in _The UMAP Journal_, volume 18, number 2, pp. 145-166. For
future updates of the data below, consult any one of a number of almanacs
(not necessarily sports almanacs). As a hint to students on how to fit
rating to the other variables an instructor may wish to mention:
"Ratings [are] based on performance standards established for completion percentage, average gain, touchdown percentage, and interception percentage." (Hassan, J., editor, (1997), _ESPN 1998 Information Please Sports Almanac_, Information Please LLC, New York, p. 262.)
Interested individuals may also wish to see the NFL's 1977 publication "National Football League Passer Rating System". In this document 25 of the 36 pages are devoted to look-up tables to compute rating rather than simply giving the formula below (NFL, 410 Park Avenue, New York, NY 1022-4444, (212) 758-1500).
NFL Passer Rating is given by
[5(%Completions - 30)/6] + [10(%TDs)/3] + [25(19 - 2(%Int))/12] + [25(Yards/Attempt - 3)/6]
where it is understood that each item in [ ] is to be truncated to be no smaller than 0 and no larger than 475/12 (giving a maximal rating of 475/3 or 158.3). This rating is rounded to the nearest tenth. When none of the truncation limits are reached, which is true for most passers after a handful of attempts, the above amounts to
Rating = [25 + 10(%Completions) + 40*(%TD) - 50(%INT) + 50(YD/ATT)]/12
All-Time Best NFL Passers by the NFL Passer Rating System:
Young, Steve 4065 2622 32678 229 103 97.6 Montana, Joe 5391 3409 40551 273 139 92.3 Favre, Brett 3757 2318 26803 213 118 89.0 Marino, Dan 7989 4763 58913 408 235 87.3 Graham, Otto 2626 1464 23584 174 135 86.6 Brunell, Mark 1719 1038 12512 72 43 86.3 Kelly, Jim 4779 2874 35467 237 175 84.4 Staubach, Roger 2958 1685 22700 153 109 83.4 Aikman, Troy 4011 2479 28346 141 115 82.8 Lomax, Neil 3153 1817 22771 136 90 82.7 Jurgensen, Sonny 4262 2433 32224 255 189 82.6 Dawson, Len 3741 2136 28711 239 183 82.6 Anderson, Ken 4475 2654 32838 197 160 81.9 Kosar, Bernie 3365 1994 23301 124 87 81.8 White, Danny 2950 1761 21959 155 132 81.7 O'Donnell, Neil 2862 1650 19026 104 57 81.6 Cunningham, Randall 3875 2177 27082 190 119 81.6 Krieg, Dave 5311 3105 38147 261 199 81.5 Esiason, Boomer 5205 2969 37920 247 184 81.1 Moon, Warren 6786 3972 49097 290 232 81.0 Chandler, Chris 2587 1494 18526 119 90 80.9
During recent NFL seasons some newspapers, including _USA Today_, have published passer rating data on quarterbacks for just the season in progress. Such newspapers, of course, provide additional example data sets for students to try to uncover the NFL passer rating method through regession.