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NFL Quarterback Rankings: Franchise Material
11. Matthew Stafford
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I have been a Stafford supporter for a long time and when people have talked about his winning percentage against teams that were above-.500 and whatever it may be, I have always pointed at the talent around him, which for many years was pretty underwhelming.
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However, that’s why I thought the Lions would go 8-8 this year, because they have the pieces to run Matt Patricia’s defense and offensively they might be as good all-around as they have ever been in the Stafford era.
Unfortunately, Kenny Golladay wasn’t available for the most part and their best back until this past Sunday has been 35-year old Adrian Peterson. Still, now with Golladay back in the lineup, Stafford has been much more aggressive with giving his 50-50 ball specialist chances downfield and he is finding ways to extend drives.
He has been careless on a few occasions, throwing the ball up for grabs or trying to fit it into some tight windows, but with his defense once again not being able to stop anybody in the big moments and not taking the ball away in two of their losses, he has had to force some stuff. The completion percentage (60.8%) doesn’t look great for Stafford and over these last 10 years, he has only averaged less yards per game once (248.0), but this guy is playing winning football.
The Lions have a more dependable run game than they have had in several years, which leads to six of their 15 touchdowns coming on the ground, but 60 percent of Stafford’s completions have resulted in first downs and he has thrown nine touchdowns in five games, without a multiple-INT showing. And no other quarterback has had a higher percentage of his passes dropped than Stafford (8.5%).
12. Derek Carr
One of the biggest risers this season has been Derek Carr.
Back in 2016, the Raiders QB was an MVP front-runner with his team in position to earn the AFC’s number one seed, until he broke his leg and his team exited in the first round.
The stats haven’t been bad since then for Carr, but the unwillingness to push the ball down the field and the amount of passes thrown behind the first-down marker was highly frustrating for me. In 2019, he was in the bottom three league-wide in intended air yards and yards to the sticks.
I know the Jon Gruden offense is built on a combination of a downhill run game and quick passes to draw the defense closer, but then you have to have those downfield shots to take advantage of it and we didn’t see that.
This year when rookie speedster Henry Ruggs has been available, Carr has been much more aggressive with taking advantage of defenses putting that extra safety in the box, as he is averaging a career-high 8.2 yards per attempt and is still tied for second with five passes of 40+ yards (five games). And despite that, he is still on pace to set new personal highs, with 73.1% completion percentage and 11 touchdowns through five games, while being one of only three QBs with at least three starts to get picked off just once and being second to only Russell Wilson with a QB rating of 115.9. Buffalo and Kansas City are also the only two other teams converting more than half their third-down attempts (52.3% for Las Vegas).
13. Cam Newton
Like I already mentioned, one of the front-runners for Comeback Player of the Year right now, Cam Newton has transformed the Patriots offense and we saw his impact the one game he wasn’t available for due to being infected, when New England hung with Kansas City through the quarters, but the guys under center for them gave the game away.
The Patriots are only 0.15 percent away from being one of three teams in the NFL right now to run the ball more than they throw it and their quarterback has been a huge factor in that, either running QB power and read option himself or just opening up room for his backs thanks to the threat he presents, while averaging a ridiculous 15.7 yards per scramble.
Cam is completing a career-high 68.1 percent of his passes and even though he has a TD-to-INT ratio of 2-to-4 as a passer, he has added five more scores on the ground and is averaging 56.3 rushing yards per game on five yards a clip. In three of his four starts, Cam has recorded between only 155 and 162 passing yards, to go with almost 400 in that shootout against Russell Wilson. But we have seen him go out there and take over a game with his arm when needed and his only two losses came at Seattle, when they were inches away from beating what is still an undefeated team, and this past Sunday against the Broncos, when they were in position to win that game late, but Cam himself didn’t look totally right and Denver’s defenses deserves some credit to beating up that Patriots O-line, that was shuffling guys around all game long.
One stat that is a little worrisome is that despite towering over some D-linemen even, Cam has had ten passes batted down at the line, which is tied for the most in the league, and that tells about how he locks in on some throws and that has also led to his receivers taking some hospital shots.
14. Jared Goff
By his standards, Goff had a pretty bad 2019 season, when the team could not run the ball and once they were down in games, they almost exclusively went to 11 personnel and completely bailed on the run, illustrated by the highest pass-percentage in negative game-script situations.
With Sean McVay using more motion at the snap and a complementary grouping of plays, where he keeps defenses off balance, Goff has looked much more comfortable this year. He has completed at least 70 percent of his passes in four of six games and thrown ten touchdowns compared to four picks, for a passer rating just North of 100.
Goff has delivered on big-time throws – 25 passes of 20+ yards – while according to PFF, he has only had three turnover-worthy plays on the season. However, we have seen what happens when the Rams have faced a big defensive line that can clog up lanes in the run game and Goff is forced to back to be a drop-back passer. That includes a game against the Giants, who outside of James Bradberry still have a rather questionable secondary, and little success against the 49ers this past Sunday night.
Goff leads the NFL with 744 yards off play-action, making up for 47.4 percent of his yardage total, and until this past game, where he had to push it down the field to catch up with San Francisco, he was dead-last in intended air yards. I would say he is very dependent on the environment he is in, but he has thrived when McVay has put him in good positions.
15. Matt Ryan
Let’s not sugarcoat this – the Falcons have had an awful season up until this point. Their defense is giving up 29 points per game, the offense has sputtered in some big moments, not being able to run the ball late in games, and they already have two losses on their resume, when they were up by at least 15 points in the second half.
Even though numbers can fool you and Ryan didn’t play his best in the second halves, when the Falcons needed it most to avoid some of their collapses, Ryan is completing 65.2 of his passes, with over 307 yards per game (second only to Dak Prescott, who still has the most total yards with almost six quarters less) and 11 TDs compared to 3 INTs. Atlanta’s 94 first downs through the air also lead the league.
Those stats are incredibly driven by two performances of four touchdowns and zero picks respectively against a couple of bottom-five pass defenses in the Cowboys and Vikings.
However, while Calvin Ridley has become a star for them, Julio Jones was only healthy for two of their games – and he dominated in those – and offseason addition Hayden Hurst has been rather disappointing, after I expected him to take on most of the role Austin Hooper had last year in this TE-friendly offense.
Matty Ice has put up respectable numbers and if the Falcons just had an average defense, they would probably be at .500 now, but he has not delivered in big moments on several occasions and with his lack of mobility, he hasn’t been able to do much when the pass-rush crashed in on him.
16. Carson Wentz
I know this might even be too high for a lot of people, but I can’t quite put Wentz in the below-average category. The Eagles quarterback leads the league with 14 turnovers (nine INTs) and his team has yet to score 30 points, despite NFL scoring being at an all-time high, with only one win on his resume. Wentz is completing less than 60 percent of his passes for the first time in his career and his eight touchdowns are one less than his interception total.
I get that his accuracy has been a little off – and I still believe there is something wrong with lower body – but his receivers have not made things easier on him with drops (tied for most in the league with 16), inconsistent play and a variety of injuries once again. The Eagles’ rushing numbers have inflated by two 70+ yard TD runs from Miles Sanders, when they caught the Steelers and Ravens in perfect positions.
If you took away those two plays and Wentz’s own rushing production, Philly would average less than 70 yards per game and only 3.7 yards per carry.
The Eagles have almost exclusively operated from the shotgun and dropped back for large stretches of games, putting a lot of pressure on their QB without much creativity in the route patterns and play-calling overall. Wentz has been sacked a league-high 25 times and he is now getting back to creating more on his own and is picking up crucial first downs with his legs (15 first downs and four TDs on 28 attempts).
So you can not fault him for not battling, since he has been getting banged around like crazy, and just this past Sunday, he showed so much against the Ravens, to almost pull off a crazy comeback.
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