One day long ago, in a galaxy perhaps far, far away, someone in the media decided to label it a “perfect” passer rating when a quarterback reaches the 158.3 threshold in the system that became part of the NFL in 1973.
For its part, the league no longer refers to it as perfect and accurately says it’s the highest the present system allows.
One reality is that most people don’t know why the system was put in place and what it was intended to represent, much less understand how the numbers work.
While some consider me a numbers freak, I’ve never gone to the lengths that some have in baseball to create legions of statistics or the NFL with the analytics takeover that is now very deep in the league.
However, the numbers have always fascinated me, especially when it is for things that don’t make sense. And that’s the issue with “perfect” passer ratings.
Some history is important. Prior to the implementation 51 years ago, passers were ranked with points allocated to where they were in different categories, the same one as those now used to calculate passer rating. The players with the most passing yards, for example, got one point and so on down the list. Second place got two points whether they were one yard behind No. 1 or 100. The other problem was that after each season, historical lists would have to be totally refigured.
So it was that a committee worked for two years on a new way of rating passers, not quarterbacks.
It’s important to realize that the system was not devised to rate passers in games. There were no computers/software as there is today and has been for many years, to update the rating after every pass play.
It all resulted in a system with a formula that set up individual rating points for each percentage in a category that has a top figure of 2.375. Once those four numbers were known, they were added up and converted to the 100 scale.
However, because it was meant for seasons, a top percentage was established for each category, based on league records at the time. An average rating of 1.000 was also determined, which reflects the time, especially in completion percentage, which was 50.0 for a 1.000 rating. The average completion percentage today is often around 65.0, which is seen with the higher ratings these days as well as throwing fewer interceptions.
Those top numbers, though, are the problem. For completion percentage, it’s 77.5. No matter what that is for a player in a game, he can’t get any more rating points for a percentage higher than 77.5. For average yards per attempt, the top is 12.50; for touchdowns it’s 11.9. The interception rating points is 2.375 for having none in a game.
There have been games in recent years where a monster game by a quarterback would have had a rating in the 200s.
As for Murray, his completion percentage Sunday was 81.0, his average per attempt 12.7 and touchdown percentage 14.3, all above the max percentages for those categories.
By using those percentages, Murray would have a 170.6 rating, not 158.3.
I’ve had a 24-page booklet for decades that was produced by the NFL and has the correlating rating points for every percentage. Surely, no one uses that anymore.
But it would be simple for the league to instruct the Elias Sports Bureau to open up the system and let it take the ratings wherever they go.
It wouldn’t affect that many games. Murray is the 61st player with a 158.3 rating that would be increased. There are many others with less than 158.3 game ratings that would be higher because a big game in one of the categories would boost their passer rating.
Wikipedia lists 79 instances of a 158.3 passer rating by a quarterback.
Frankly, I’ve lobbied the league to do that, but it falls on deaf ears.
But I won’t stop trying.
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