Can you have a negative qb rating

Kirk Cousins : 29 of 46, yards, 1 touchdown, 0 interceptions, Rodgers, on the other hand, took only one sack, did not fumble and drew a number of defensive penalties that kept drives alive. Each quarterback impacted the game through these plays, but none of them are reflected in the traditional stats. The lack of context for each play also increases the distortion of the performance. Most would acknowledge that a 7-yard completion on third-and is not a successful play, but base-level statistics treat all yards equally.

Coaches, players and fans know what wins games; it only makes sense that the statistics that judge the most important position in the game do, too.

QBR is a measure of efficiency, so Rodgers created far more value per play than Cousins did. For each play, QBR begins by asking: How successful was the play for the team, given its context? Context for each play includes the down, yards to go for a first down, distance to the end zone and time remaining in the half.

All of these factors can be used before the ball is snapped to estimate the future net score advantage the team currently on offense can expect. This estimate is known as " expected points. The list of top DVOA offenses on third down, for example, is more accurate than the conventional NFL conversion statistic because it takes into account that converting third-and-long is more difficult than converting third-and-short, and that a turnover is worse than an incomplete pass because it eliminates the opportunity to move the other team back with a punt on fourth down.

The same could be said about plays on fourth down or in the red zone. Second, unlike formulas based on comparing drives rather than individual plays, DVOA can be separated into a myriad of splits e.

Therefore, we're able to break teams and players down to find strengths and weaknesses in a variety of situations. All Pittsburgh third downs can be compared to how an average team does on third down.

Josh McCown and Mike Glennon can each be compared to how an average quarterback performs in the red zone, or with a lead, or in the second half of the game. This doesn't just give us a better idea of which team or player is better. More importantly, it helps us understand why they're better, and therefore allows us to offer prescriptions for improvement in the future. Finally, a third advantage of DVOA is that normalization makes our comparisons of current teams and players to past teams and players going back to more accurate than those based on traditional statistics like wins or total yards, as well as those based on more sophisticated metrics that aren't normalized e.

For instance, which Denver Broncos team had the better offense: the edition with Peyton Manning, or the club led by Terrell Davis? Going by total yardage 7, vs. The team were clearly better. However, this ignores the fact that the average NFL offense was much more pass-oriented, and thus more efficient, in than in If we take the difference in offensive environment into account by using DVOA, it turns out that the Broncos offense was slightly better relative to the rest of the league Other plays are included for both, but scored differently.

This leads to separate baselines on each side of the ball. For instance. In September of , we introduced the latest version of the DVOA ratings system, which is version 7. This version fixed some errors that existed in various adjustments, and also changed team statistics so that scrambles now count as pass plays rather than run plays.

We are slowly updating our past database to change the numbers within to the new version of DVOA. As of now, the years have been updated to version 7. Those numbers have only been updated to the new version in Scrambles are listed in the play-by-play going back to the season, except for in We have scrambles marked from our first-ever year of game charting.

In individual player statistics, scrambles are still counted under a quarterback's rushing stats rather than his passing stats. After using DVOA for a few months, we came across a strange phenomenon: well-regarded players, particularly those known for their durability, had DVOA ratings that came out around average. By definition, an average level of performance is better than that provided by half of the league and the ability to maintain that level of performance while carrying a heavy workload is very valuable indeed.

What would happen to those plays? Rather those plays would have to be distributed among the remaining players in the offense, with the bulk of them being given to a replacement running back. This is where we arrive at the concept of replacement level, borrowed from our partners at Baseball Prospectus. When a player is removed from an offense, he is usually not replaced by a player of similar ability.

Nearly every starting player in the NFL is a starter because he is better than the alternative. Of course, the real replacement player is different for each team in the NFL. Sometimes a player like Ryan Grant or Danny Woodhead will be cut by one team and turn into a star for another. On other teams, the drop from the starter to the backup can be even greater than the general drop to replacement level. The Indianapolis Colts of the dark year between the Manning and Luck eras--will be the hallmark example of this until the end of time.

The choice to start an inferior player or to employ a sub-replacement level backup, however, falls to the team, not the starter being evaluated. Thus, we generalize replacement level for the league as a whole, as the ultimate goal is to evaluate players independent of the quality of their teammates. Our estimates of replacement level were re-done during the season and are computed differently for each position. For quarterbacks, we analyzed situations where two or more quarterbacks had played meaningful snaps for a team in the same season, then compared the overall DVOA of the original starters to the overall DVOA of the replacements.

We did not include situations where the backup was actually a top prospect waiting his turn on the bench, since a first-round pick is by no means a "replacement-level" player. At other positions, there is no easy way to separate players into "starters" and "replacements," since unlike at quarterback, being the starter doesn't make you the only guy who gets in the game. Instead, we used a simpler method, ranking players at each position in each season by attempts.

The players who made up the final 10 percent of passes or runs were split out as "replacement players" and then compared to the players making up the other 90 percent of plays at that position.

This took care of the fact that not every non-starter at running back or wide receiver is a freely available talent. Think of Jonathan Stewart or Randall Cobb, for example. Saying that Tony Romo's passes were worth 40 success value points over replacement in has very little value without a context to tell us if 40 is good total or a bad one. It is our estimate that a generic replacement-level quarterback, throwing in the same situations as Romo, would have been worth 1, fewer yards. First downs, touchdowns, and turnovers all have an estimated yardage value in this system, so what we are saying is that a generic replacement-level quarterback would have fewer yards and touchdowns and more turnovers that would total up to be equivalent to the value of 1, yards.

Football statistics can't be analyzed in the same way baseball statistics are. After all, there are only 16 games in a season.

The more games, the more events to analyze, and the more events to analyze, the more statistical significance. That is true, but the trick is to consider each play in an NFL game as a separate event. For example, Drew Brees played only 16 games in , but in those 16 games he had passing plays including sacks and 16 rushing plays including scrambles for a total of events. The maximum result is 2. Percentage of interceptions: interceptions thrown divided by passing attempts multiplied by.

This is because. The above four results are added together, divided by six and then multiplied by The result is the passers rating. Click here for a simple calculator to test your quarterback's rating. Fallacies in this formula aside from the character and professionalism indicated by the NFL :. Bob Lee [32]. Gary Keithley. Gary Keithley [33]. Joe Namath [34]. Archie Manning [35]. James Harris [36]. Dan Fouts [37]. Terry Bradshaw [38].

Norm Snead [39]. Washington Redskins. Joe Namath [40]. Richard Todd [41]. Craig Morton [42]. Super Bowl XII , pulled in third quarter. Dan Pastorini [43].

Mike Livingston [44]. Terry Bradshaw [45]. Cliff Stoudt [46]. Warren Moon [47]. Warren Moon [48]. Dave Wilson [49]. Todd Marinovich [50].