Last updated: 30th August 2026. Stats current to the end of the 2025 regular season.
A quarterback’s stats record how he threw the ball: how many passes he completed, how far they travelled, how many became touchdowns and how many the other team caught instead. Passer rating (RTG) rolls the four main ones into a single number between 0 and 158.3. Everything else on this page explains what each of those numbers is actually worth.
I remember watching my first full game and realising the graphic in the corner was doing something I couldn’t follow. Not the score, the other one, the row of abbreviations that appeared every time the quarterback jogged off. It turns out it’s the same six or seven numbers every single time, and once you know them, you know them for good.
This is the first of three guides under NFL Stats Decoded. It covers the quarterback, whose numbers are on screen more than everyone else’s put together.
I will be updating the top 10 QB stats here weekly for 2026 so you can easily check them and also unpack them at a glance with the QB stats guide below.
NFL Week 2 Quarterback stats
NFL Stats · 2026 Season
Quarterbacks, Decoded
The 2026 passing leaders so far, sorted by yards. Two games in, Tyler Shough leads the league for yards, with Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud close behind, none of them the names most people expected up top. The Move column shows how far each quarterback has climbed or slipped in the yards ranking since last week. It is a small sample, so read it as early form rather than a verdict. Tap a heading to sort by completions, touchdowns, interceptions or rating.
Deeper blue = the stronger number in that column
How to read a quarterback’s stat line
Here’s a real one. This is Matthew Stafford’s 2025 regular season, the year he threw for more yards than anyone and was voted MVP.
| G | CMP/ATT | PCT | YDS | Y/A | TD | INT | SACK | passer rating (RTG) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | 388/597 | 65.0 | 4,707 | 7.9 | 46 | 8 | 23 | 109.2 |
Matthew Stafford, Los Angeles Rams, 2025 regular season. Source: Pro Football Reference.
Read left to right, that says: he played seventeen games, threw 597 passes and his own team caught 388 of them, which is 65.0%. Those completions gained 4,707 yards, an average of 7.9 yards for every pass he threw. Forty-six of them were touchdowns, eight were caught by the opposition, and he was tackled behind the line before he could throw on twenty-three occasions. The 109.2 at the end is passer rating RTG, which is the first four of those numbers squeezed into one.
That’s the whole thing. Every quarterback stat line you’ll ever see is a version of that row.
The basic passing stats
Completion percentage
Completion percentage is the share of his passes that his own team caught. Stafford’s 65.0% means roughly two out of every three throws found their man.
It’s the easiest stat to read and the easiest to be misled by. A quarterback who throws short, safe passes all afternoon will post a high completion percentage without having done much with it, and a quarterback throwing deep into tight coverage will post a lower one while creating more. It tells you about accuracy and about risk appetite at the same time, and it doesn’t separate the two. That’s precisely the problem CPOE was invented to fix, and I come back to it below.
Yards per attempt
Yards per attempt is passing yards divided by passes thrown. It’s the efficiency version of the yardage total, and most analysts would rather have it.
The reason is that raw passing yards reward whoever threw the most, and quarterbacks on losing teams throw a lot, because you can’t run the clock down when you’re behind. Yards per attempt strips the volume out and asks what each throw was worth. The 2025 league average was 7.0 yards per attempt. Drake Maye led at 8.9, which over five hundred-odd throws is an enormous gap.
Touchdowns and interceptions
Touchdowns are passes that ended in the end zone. Interceptions are passes the defense caught.
You’ll usually see them together as a ratio, because the pair of them says something about judgement that neither says alone. Stafford’s 46 to 8 in 2025 was exceptional. A quarterback throwing, say, 20 touchdowns to 15 interceptions is giving the ball away nearly as often as he’s scoring with it, and his team will feel it.
One caution. Interceptions aren’t purely the quarterback’s fault. A ball that bounces off a receiver’s hands into a defender’s is recorded against the quarterback exactly like a terrible decision would be.
Sacks
A sack is the quarterback being tackled behind the line of scrimmage before he can throw. It’s counted in his stat line, and it’s the one number in that row that isn’t really about his passing at all.
Sacks are shared blame: sometimes the blockers were beaten, sometimes he held the ball too long looking for something better. What’s useful is the rate rather than the total, because a quarterback who plays every game will accumulate more of them. In 2025 quarterbacks were sacked on 6.87% of their dropbacks league-wide. Geno Smith was sacked on 10.93% of his, which is the statistical shape of a rough season behind a struggling offensive line.
Worth knowing: sacks do not appear in passer rating at all. More on that shortly.
What is Passer rating (RTG)?
Passer rating is one number that summarises a quarterback’s passing line, on a scale from 0 to 158.3. Higher is better. It takes four things and nothing else: completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown rate and interception rate.
Each of those four is scored separately, each score is capped at 2.375 no matter how good it gets, and the four are then added up, divided by six and multiplied by a hundred. That’s where the strange maximum comes from. Four capped scores of 2.375 make 9.5, and 9.5 divided by six times a hundred is 158.3.
You do not need to do that arithmetic, ever. Pro Football Reference sets out the components in its stats glossary if you want to see them. What’s worth taking from it is that the formula is generous at the top: once a quarterback is very good in one category, being even better stops earning him anything.
What counts as a good passer rating
NFL passer rating leaders, 2025 regular season, qualified passers. Source: Pro Football Reference.
| Quarterback | Passer rating |
|---|---|
| Drake Maye (NE) | 113.5 |
| Matthew Stafford (LAR) | 109.2 |
| Jared Goff (DET) | 105.5 |
| Lamar Jackson (BAL) | 103.8 |
| Josh Allen (BUF) | 102.2 |
| League average | 91.4 |
The league average is the number to hold on to. In 2025 it was 91.4, and everything else reads against that.
Rather than hand you a rule of thumb I made up, here is where the line actually fell. Nine qualified passers finished the 2025 regular season above 100, and the average sat at 91.4. That average moves a little from year to year, so the honest way to judge any rating is against the average for that particular season rather than a fixed scale. The full 2025 passing table at Pro Football Reference lists every qualified passer with the league average at the foot of it, so you can see the whole spread for yourself.
The word qualified on that table is doing real work. To appear on an official leaderboard a quarterback needs a minimum number of attempts, and there’s a good reason. In 2025 the running back Cam Akers threw exactly one pass. It went 32 yards for a touchdown, and his passer rating for the season is a perfect 158.3. Without a minimum, he’d top the list.
What passer rating misses
Three things, and they matter.
Rushing. Passer rating counts only what happens through the air. A quarterback who gains a hundred yards with his legs and scores twice on the ground gets nothing for it. For the modern quarterbacks who are genuine running threats, the number is describing part of the job and ignoring the rest.
Sacks. Not in there either. A quarterback sacked fifty times and one sacked fifteen times can post identical ratings.
Situation. A completion is a completion whether it came on third-and-goal in a tied game or in the last two minutes of a thirty-point defeat. Passer rating treats them the same. That’s the gap Total QBR was built to close, and it’s the next section.
Total QBR, and why it disagrees with passer rating
Total QBR is ESPN’s rival to passer rating. It runs from 0 to 100, where 50 is designed to be average, and it takes in the things passer rating leaves out: rushing, sacks, fumbles, and above all the situation each play happened in. Plays that mattered count for more, and garbage time at the end of a lost game counts for much less.
That last part is why the two numbers can tell opposite stories about the same season.
2025 regular season. Source: Pro Football Reference.
| Quarterback | Passer rating | Total QBR | Record as starter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drake Maye (NE) | 113.5 | 77.1 | 14-3 |
| Matthew Stafford (LAR) | 109.2 | 71.2 | 12-5 |
| Jacoby Brissett (ARI) | 94.1 | 41.2 | 1-11 |
Look at Jacoby Brissett. A 94.1 passer rating is above the league average of 91.4, so by that measure he had a slightly better than typical season. His Total QBR was 41.2, well below the 50 that represents average, and his team won one of his twelve starts.
Both numbers are correctly calculated. They’re answering different questions. Passer rating asked how he threw, and the answer was decently. QBR asked how much his throwing helped his team win the games he played, weighted by when it happened, and the answer was not much. A quarterback on a heavily beaten team gets a lot of throws in situations where the result is already settled, and those throws inflate one number while barely touching the other.
Neither is the “real” one. When they disagree, the disagreement is the information.
The advanced QB stats: EPA and CPOE
Two you’ll meet constantly in analysis. Both are explained in full on the NFL Stats hub, so here’s what each means specifically for a quarterback.
EPA per play measures how much the average snap with him at quarterback improved his team’s expected points, given the down, distance and field position it started from. It’s the closest single thing to a measure of whether he made the offense better, and it’s what most analysts reach for first.
CPOE compares his completion percentage with what a model expected, given how difficult his particular throws were. A positive CPOE means he completed more passes than the difficulty of his own attempts suggested he should. It’s the fix for the flaw in raw completion percentage described further up: it stops a quarterback being rewarded for throwing short.
The two get quoted together, often combined, because between them they cover accuracy and value.
Where NFL betting fits in
Short section, because you’ll see these numbers used this way and it helps to recognise what you’re looking at.
A quarterback’s passing yards are one of the most common player props, which is a bet on an individual’s statistic rather than on the result. A sportsbook sets a line, say 245.5 passing yards, and the bet is whether he finishes above or below it. The line is built from the sort of numbers on this page, mostly yards per attempt and how many throws his team is expected to make.
NFL Quarterback stats 2025
NFL Stats · 2025 Season
Quarterbacks, Decoded
The 2025 passing leaders, sorted by yards. MVP Matthew Stafford led the league in both yards and touchdowns at 37; rookie Drake Maye posted the top passer rating. Tap a heading to sort by completions, touchdowns, interceptions or rating.
Deeper blue = the stronger number in that column
Common questions about NFL QB stats
What is a good passer rating in the NFL?
Passer rating runs from 0 to 158.3, and the league average in the 2025 regular season was 91.4, which is the line to judge any quarterback against. Nine qualified passers finished that season above 100, and Drake Maye led the league at 113.5. The league average shifts slightly each year, so comparing a rating to that season’s average is more reliable than using a fixed scale.
What is the difference between passer rating and Total QBR?
Passer rating uses four things only: completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown rate and interception rate, on a 0 to 158.3 scale. Total QBR is ESPN’s alternative, on a 0 to 100 scale where 50 is average, and it also counts rushing, sacks, fumbles and the situation each play happened in. Because QBR discounts plays in games that are already decided, the two can rate the same season very differently.
What is the highest possible passer rating?
158.3. The formula scores four categories separately and caps each one at 2.375, so the best possible total is 9.5, which becomes 158.3 once the formula divides by six and multiplies by a hundred. Reaching it in a full season is effectively impossible, but quarterbacks manage it in individual games, and players who throw only one or two passes in a season sometimes finish with it.
Does passer rating include a quarterback’s rushing yards?
No. Passer rating measures passing only, so yards and touchdowns gained on the ground count for nothing in it. That’s one of its biggest limitations with modern quarterbacks who run. ESPN’s Total QBR does include rushing, which is one reason the two numbers often disagree about quarterbacks who are dangerous with their legs.
What is a good completion percentage in the NFL?
The league average in the 2025 regular season was 64.3%, so anything around 67% or higher is a strong year and Drake Maye led the league at 72.0%. Read it alongside yards per attempt, though. A high completion percentage earned on short, safe throws is worth less than a slightly lower one earned throwing downfield.
Where to go next
The other two guides in this cluster cover the rest of the field: NFL Defense Stats Decoded for sacks, tackles and interceptions from the other side, and NFL Team Stats Decoded for the whole-team numbers that predict who wins. If you want the full map of every stat, go back to NFL Stats Decoded.