I’ve made another important change to my Quarterback Efficiency Rating. The updated QER gives quarterbacks more credit for full-season passing production, while rushing can now improve a rating without ever lowering it.

The goal is straightforward: great passing remains the foundation of quarterback play. Rushing adds value, but a quarterback should not be penalized simply because he does not run.

Why the formula needed to change

The previous version combined 90% passing score with 10% rushing score. That recognized the added value of a mobile quarterback, but it also created an unintended penalty. A great passer with little or no rushing production could see his overall QER fall below his passing score.

The passing calculation also leaned entirely on rate statistics. Completion percentage, yards per attempt, interception percentage, first-down percentage, and success percentage all tell us something important, but they do not fully distinguish between an efficient partial season and comparable efficiency sustained across an entire schedule.

The 2013 season exposed both problems. Josh McCown was outstanding in eight games, completing 66.5% of his passes for 1,829 yards, 13 touchdowns, and one interception. The earlier formula ranked him ahead of Peyton Manning, whose full season included 5,477 passing yards and a then-record 55 touchdown passes. Manning’s overall score also fell because he provided almost no rushing value.

McCown deserved credit for an excellent performance, but the rating needed to recognize the enormous difference in total passing production. Manning also should not have lost ground for failing to add rushing yards to one of the greatest passing seasons in league history.

The updated QER formula

The new system begins with a complete Pass Score, adds a bonus for rushing, and caps the final result at 100:

Pass Score = 75% Passing Efficiency + 25% Production
Rush Bonus = Rush Score × 5%
QER = min(100, Pass Score + Rush Bonus)

This structure makes two meaningful changes. Total passing production is now part of the base score, and rushing is purely additive. A quarterback who does not run keeps his full Pass Score. A quarterback who does run effectively can earn as many as five additional QER points.

Passing Efficiency

Passing Efficiency remains the largest part of the rating. It is built from five season-relative percentile scores:

  • Success percentage (30%) measures how often pass plays are successful based on down and distance.
  • Yards per attempt (25%) measures how efficiently a quarterback generates passing yards.
  • Interception avoidance (20%) rewards quarterbacks who protect the football.
  • Passing first-down percentage (15%) measures how frequently attempts move the chains.
  • Completion percentage (10%) measures accuracy and consistency.

Together, these statistics describe the quality of a quarterback’s passing on a per-play basis.

Passing Production

Production supplies 25% of the Pass Score and uses three season totals:

  • Passing yards (50% of Production)
  • Passing touchdowns (30%)
  • Passing first downs (20%)

Efficiency still carries three times as much weight as production within the Pass Score. The production component is not intended to reward volume at any cost. It is there to recognize quarterbacks who maintain strong performance while carrying a much larger season-long workload.

Rushing as a bonus

The Rush Score evaluates four types of rushing contribution plus ball security:

  • Successful rushes per quarterback play (30%)
  • Rushing first downs per quarterback play (25%)
  • Rushing yards per quarterback play (25%)
  • Rushing touchdowns per quarterback play (10%)
  • Fumble avoidance per quarterback play (10%)

A quarterback play is defined as a pass attempt, sack, or rushing attempt:

QB plays = pass attempts + sacks + rushing attempts

Measuring rushing production against total quarterback plays prevents a handful of carries from having an outsized effect. Fumble avoidance uses total fumbles per quarterback play, with a lower rate receiving a better percentile score. The resulting Rush Score is multiplied by 5%, creating a bonus between zero and five points. Because the bonus is added after the Pass Score is calculated, the supplemental score can help a quarterback but can never hurt him.

What changed in the 2013 rankings

The revised 2013 Quarterback Efficiency Ratings now place Peyton Manning first with a 96.8 QER. His 95.3 Passing Efficiency combines with a perfect Production score to produce a 96.5 Pass Score. His 7.8 Rush Score adds 0.4 points rather than reducing the rating.

Josh McCown ranks fifth at 78.1. His strong efficiency is still rewarded, while the Production component accounts for the difference between his eight-game body of work and Manning’s historic full season.

That result better reflects what I want QER to measure. An efficient passer should score well, sustained elite production should matter, and rushing ability should be valuable without becoming a requirement for a top rating.

The updated reports are available for every season on the NFL ratings page.