Ranking QBs by Offensive Production

QBs for better or worse, will always be judged by their win-loss record, particularly in the playoffs.  Fans will point to a QBs record and call him a loser no matter his stats, something Vikings fans can absolutely relate to with Kirk Cousins.  In part this is because the quarterback, like a head coach, becomes the face of a franchise and takes more blame than they deserve for success or failure, but a larger part is because QBs who play well tend to lead offenses that score more points and more points scored tends to lead to more wins.  Not always, there is another side of the football that needs to stop the opposition from scoring, but in general, the better the QB, the better the offense, and the more wins a team will have.

So why is that instead of looking at a QB's win loss-record, we instead don't just look at how their offenses have ranked up in their time leading that offense?  Take the defensive side of the football out of it, and instead look at what that QB actually has the most control of?  To that end, I have gathered the yards and scoring percentage per drive of the majority of QBs with the most starts on a single team from 2001 on. I used per drive stats to remove any scores by the defense, and add context around QBs who might be inefficient for most of a game, going three and out so many times that they get a lot more opportunities to score.  It also doesn't punish QBs who go on long drives keeping their defense off the field like per game stats can.  Below are the results:




The top four should be of no surprise to anyone. Mahomes, Brady, Manning and Brees are some of the most productive passers to ever play the game, and are arguably the four best QBs of the past twenty year.  What is a bit surprising is where Dak lands on this list, ahead of future hall of famer Aaron Rodgers and Josh Allen, two QBs who no sane fan would ever put behind Prescott. Prescott being better than Allen here can be explained away with how poorly Allen's first two seasons were (since 2020 the Bills have the highest scoring percentage, 2nd in yards).  Rodgers being worse is likely due to him being incredibly overrated and not as good as we were lead to believe. On top of that, Dak has played in an incredibly talented offense his entire time in Dallas, most of the time with an elite run game, WRs and offensive line.  

Moving to the bottom of the list, and it is not surprising that Carr and Dalton are there.  Carr, because he isn't in that upper tier of QBs and had played on a terrible team for most of his time with the Raiders, and Dalton because he is the epitome of a mediocre QB.  Cousins being this low will be a bit surprising for some though, but this might explain why despite some of the numbers he puts up, he has never had success getting a team into championship contention, let alone actually winning a Super Bowl. 

Digging more into the context around Cousin's numbers, he has not faced nearly close to the amount of adversity the two QBs surrounding him like Carr and Stafford did in Oakland and Detroit.  Stafford did have some solid weapons at times, but never had a quality head coach or offensive coordinator at any point during his time there.  Carr had some quality receivers in Oakland as well, but not every season and a good amount of his seasons in Oakland his run game and offensive line were poor.  Cousins has had a great run game for most of his time in MN, and elite receivers all six seasons here.  His offensive line has never been great, but then again it was pretty lousy in the six seasons leading up to Cousins taking over, and the menagerie of QBs that lead those teams had more success on average than Cousins has had playing behind poor Olines with worse receivers most of those seasons. There really isn't an excuse for him being so low on this list and it is pretty clear he deserves some responsibility for the lack of offensive production his offenses have produced.  On top of that, it is pretty telling that the Vikings' best offensive season with Kirk came in 2019, when Kirk threw the fewest passes of his career.

Regardless, as the Vikings move forward either with Cousins or a new QB, they need to do better scoring on offense than they have the past six seasons.  The worst offense in the final four teams in the playoffs this season was nineth in scoring percentage and the average rank was fifth.  17th just isn't going to cut it, and realistically with the Vikings defense and run game, even that 6th place season in 2019 isn't good enough. The Vikings need to get more out of their QB to compete for a championship consistently, ideally by changing the QB, but if that isn't in the cards, by making it impossible for Kirk to hold the offense back.