00:00Through the first 58 years of the Super Bowl era, there have been 27,686 regular and postseason
00:10team games. Those encapsulate a lot of performances, both good and bad, by a lot of quarterbacks.
00:19One of the traditional, fundamental ways to assess these performances is with the metric
00:24passer rating. Passer rating is a complex mathematical formula that incorporates four
00:30different variables, completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown percentage, and
00:35interception percentage. But there is one major flaw that to my knowledge doesn't exist
00:41in any of the other rate metrics in any of the three sports with which I'm familiar.
00:47It frequently lies. For each of the four variables, the formulas within the formula if you will,
01:00this metric decides it is simply unwilling to acknowledge numbers that fall below zero
01:05or above 2.375. This is important and cannot be overstated. That is an arbitrary, man-made
01:14barrier that was baselessly implemented and skews how we perceive passer rating figures.
01:20So based on this formula, and that quirky, artificial, random rule, if an NFL quarterback's
01:26performance in a given sample entails a completion percentage north of 77.5 or south of 30,
01:34it just pretends that those are the boundaries of the numeric counting system and rounds
01:38to those numbers since that's what they'd need to be to keep the result between zero
01:43and 2.375. If a quarterback completes every pass, the passer rating formula just decides
01:50that nope, I'm gonna pretend that actually 22.5% of his passes were incomplete. Likewise,
01:57if a quarterback tosses an incompletion on every pass, it just pretends he actually completed
02:0230% of his passes. For yards per attempt, no additional credit is given above 12.5 and
02:09the artificial floor below which the sliding scale inexplicably ends is 3. For touchdown
02:16percentage, since it's impossible to be in the negatives, the artificial and the actual
02:21floor are one in the same, but if a signal caller tops 11.875, sorry buddy, that's considered
02:28the highest number in existence here. And finally, for interception percentage, it's
02:34also impossible to be in the negatives, meaning the artificial and actual ceiling are one
02:39in the same, though on the other side of the coin, anyone who tosses picks on more
02:43than 9.5% of his passes is spared the ridicule of the true number being reflected.
02:49We'll dive deeper into the specifics shortly, but ultimately this has marred the passer
02:55rating listed for thousands of games. Artificial ceilings and floors are simply lies, and they're
03:01lies that have by and large been blindly accepted without question or pushback for
03:07decades. Now, it is true that across big samples of full seasons or careers comprised by several
03:15hundred or more passes, these bullshit boundaries don't really ever come into play. Over an
03:20extended period, no NFL quarterbacks complete passes at a rate below 30% or above 77.5%,
03:28and they don't average over 12.5 or fewer than 3 yards per attempt. They don't launch
03:34touchdowns on more than 11.875% of attempts, and with the exception of 1947's Sid Luckman
03:42and 1962's George Blanda, who predate this era anyway, they don't toss picks on more
03:47than 9.5% of passes. But on smaller, game-level samples, the bullshit boundaries come into
03:55play a ton. As an example, let's take the top game authored by my personal all-time
04:01favorite quarterback, Steve Young. On December 19, 1993, he completed 17 of 23 passes for
04:10354 yards, 4 touchdowns, and no picks. That amounts to a 73.9 completion percentage, 15.4
04:20yards per attempt, a 17.4 touchdown percentage, and obviously an interception percentage of
04:270. With the formula shortchanging Young in pretending he only averaged the upper boundary
04:32figures of 12.5 yards per attempt and an 11.875 TD percentage, that spits out an artificial
04:40rating of 155.3. But if the true numbers were utilized, 185.8, over 30 points better.
04:51In other words, the 155.3 is a lie. I don't like the lies. So I took a look at each and
05:00every game that each and every quarterback played in each and every season of the Super
05:06Bowl era, and I rectified it. Here are each of the era's 24,492 instances as of 2024 in which
05:17an NFL quarterback threw at least 20 passes in a regular or postseason game, a number
05:22representing nearly 90% of the overall team games, meaning only particularly small samples
05:29are omitted. They're plotted by season and by what their actual passer rating would be
05:35if we just let nature take its course and apply the accurate, truthful number for each of the
05:40four passing variables, even if they're below zero or above 2.375. If you squint really hard,
05:51you'll notice a few of them aren't quite readable. It's okay, we'll move forward anyway and do so
05:57with the benefit of mostly readable outliers. So just how prevalent are these phony barriers?
06:04Well, let's start with those outliers. With the artificial floor of zero for each of the four
06:10variables, that means a lowest possible numerator here of zero, and thus an overall passer rating
06:16artificial floor that exists for some reason of zero. That would erroneously lead one to believe
06:23that there was a 20-way tie at zero for the most inefficient passer rating games of the Super Bowl
06:30era. But instead we see that in reality, there were 178 games in which QBs finished a game with
06:37an actual passer rating in sub-zero land, and so this chart more properly separates and identifies
06:44the worst of the worst. On the other hand, with the artificial ceiling of 2.375 for each of the
06:52four variables, that means the highest possible numerator here is 9.5, which is then divided by
06:586 and multiplied by 100, and thus puts the overall passer rating artificial ceiling that exists for
07:05some reason at, and some of you dorks might already be familiar with this number, 158.3.
07:15So that's the math behind that, and that math would mistakenly lead one to believe there was
07:21a 38-way tie for the most efficient passer rating games of this era. But instead we see that in
07:28reality there were 201 instances in which QBs finished a game with an actual passer rating
07:34north of 158.3, and so this chart more properly separates and identifies the best of the best.
07:43Plenty more that weren't extreme outliers were nevertheless affected, for better or worse, by the
07:49artificial boundaries. Those 158.3s and 0s occur when all four metrics fall at or beyond the
07:57boundaries, but the passer ratings of more middle-of-the-road performances still become
08:01compromised if they happen to have 3, 2, or even 1 of the metrics fall beyond them.
08:08For instance, QBs have combined for 856 games in which they completed more than 77.5% of their passes.
08:17The 2.375 artificial ceiling from just that one element right there shortchanges nearly 900
08:24performances. None more so than 2019 Drew Brees' in Week 15 when he completed all but one of his
08:3230 passes. On the flip side, 137 player games came in under 30%, providing him with a bogus boost up
08:40to 30. None bigger than 1985 Dave Wilson, who opened the season by completing just 2 of 22
08:47passes before getting yanked less than three quarters into the campaign. More than 220 of
08:53these games featured a QB that averaged over 12.5 yards per pass, with the most harm in that
08:59aspect inflicted on a 1967 Johnny Unitas game in Atlanta where a full six yards per pass were
09:05chopped off for the purposes of passer rating for no reason whatsoever. Meanwhile, in a 1970 game in
09:12which in reality Billy Kilmer was swallowed up by the Purple People Eaters to the tune of not
09:17even matching his pass attempt total in passing yards, it just pretends that he had three times
09:23as many yards as attempts. Quarterbacks collectively had over 950 games throwing TDs
09:29on more than 11.875% of passes, with 1977 Bob Greasy not being thankful for drawing the ultimate
09:36short straw on Turkey Day when more than 26% of his 23 passes resulted in scores, only to be
09:43woefully under-recognized in the eyes of passer rating. And finally, in over 1500 games a quarterback
09:51threw an interception on more than 9.5% of his passes, with the trio that completed passes
09:56to the opposition on a quarter of their attempts getting the largest reprieve. Now while many of
10:01those aforementioned games within the four passing variables overlap, overall more than 3400, or
10:08about 1 in 7, of all these games are inaccurately portrayed by the NFL due to the nonsensical
10:15artificial bookends. With any simple percentage-based rate metric in any sport, it's impossible to be
10:21below zero or above 100, and that's always accurately reflected. If an NBA player hits
10:27all 10 of his shots in a game, we say his field goal percentage that game was 100. We don't
10:32artificially cap it at like 84.2 and call that or anything above it perfect because we don't like
10:39dealing with numbers that realistically could only stem from smaller samples. And there's
10:44absolutely no reason for the same concept to not apply to all rate metrics, even the more complex
10:51beyond a simple percentage. For example, historically the average big league baseball player has an OPS
10:57of roughly 725, but if one were to theoretically homer on every plate appearance of a given sample,
11:03his OPS therein would and should be characterized as 5000, regardless of whether or not that would
11:10look wonky. We don't randomly call an OPS of, say, 2800 to be perfect, with any performance
11:17beyond that rendered moot. Same on the other extreme. Though no one posts an OPS of zero
11:23across any sort of decent-sized sample, it's of course possible in a small sample. But there's
11:28not an artificial floor of, say, 300 to avoid wonkiness. People should have the option to
11:35embrace it. Besides, it's accepted that sample size would be inherently taken into account when
11:41dealing with rate metrics. That's why there are generally minimum qualifiers in connection with
11:47them. Ipso facto, the only ceiling that should exist within passer rating, the natural ceiling,
11:53and the number that should technically constitute perfection, is 831.25 in the theoretical scenario
12:00of every pass being a 99-yard touchdown. And the only floor that should exist, the natural floor,
12:07is negative 414.58 in the theoretical scenario of every pass being an interception. The artificial
12:15constraints of 0 and 2.375 within the individual variable formulas leading to the bigger picture
12:22artificial constraints of 0 and 158.3 are unequivocally irrational. Now, with that
12:30mathematical atrocity fixed, we're able to assess what we're left with. With the true figures revealed,
12:36they're teeming with takeaways and anecdotes. From the majesty of Lamar Jackson's game that
12:42sits atop the throne, having taken the elevator more than 65 points above so-called perfection,
12:49to the majesty of Dan Pastorini taking the submarine nearly 60 points below zero,
12:55and everything in between. With the emergence of clarity and the appropriate numbers unearthed,
13:01we find so many quarterbacks that have crafted so many performances far better or worse than
13:07what has been inaccurately conveyed for decades, and it's important to shine a light on them,
13:13which we'll continue to do in the episodes to come.
13:26Thank you all so much for watching and supporting Secret Base. If you haven't already, make sure to
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