Maybe, maybe not. Problem is throwing the ball isn’t the sole purpose of a QB, and even then there are metrics that passer rating ignores.
Passer Rating:
Number of attempts completed, yards thrown with those completions, whether those completions became touchdowns or interceptions. That’s it. Anything else the player is doing is ignored. Anything. For Instance….
Sacks
On Sunday, Carson Wentz was 25 for 43 for 211 yards. No turnovers, completed over 50% of his passes, so passer rating is fine with it. But he was also sacked 9 times. Part of this was on his Oline, can’t talk about sacks without starting with Oline, but a lot of it was on him. How long he was holding on to the ball is insane, that’s a QBR stat.
Those sacks repeatedly took them out of convertible 2nd and 3rd down opportunities, absolutely costing them the game; and passer rating does not care because it’s not “throwing the football.”
Competition
If you were to throw 6 TDs against the Buffalo Bills, that’d be a wildly impressive feat, right? Equally as impressive as throwing 6 TDs against the NY Jets? Passer Rating doesn’t care. A TD is a touchdown, and they’re all equally easy regardless of game circumstance or opponents. Those are QBR stats. Home or Away, top defense or bad defense, 1st quarter tied or 4th quarter down by 2: QBR factors in every single one of those things.
Smart QB Plays
Its 3rd and long on your opponent’s 30 and you’re down by 2. The defense goes all out blitz and you can’t find your guy right away… what do you do? Passer rating says don’t you dare throw that ball away, that’s an incompletion and that means you’re a bad QB. Take the sack, take your team out of field goal range, preserve your rating. What if you’re down by 4 and you’re on the 50 with 3 seconds left? We need to kneel to accept the loss, because if I throw a Hail Mary and get intercepted, thatll kill my nice passer rating on the day. Why would intentionally hurting your passer rating be a good thing? Because it’s not a particularly well thought-out stat. QBR factors for all of this.
Running the Ball
You brought this one up, it is part of QBR yes. But the problem with neglecting it is that running is a part of QB play today. What teams have QBs who never run? Rodgers runs. Dak runs. Wentz runs. Garoppolo runs. That guy in Tampa who was drafted in 2000 doesn’t run. That is the era passer rating was built for.
Scenario: A team is down by 3 at the end of the game, runs on first down, and then the rush is on so the QB has to throw it away on second down. On third and long, there’s an opening up the middle, so he takes off for 15 yards. First down again, bad pass rush, throw the ball away. Second down, RB up the middle for 9 yards. Timeout. Third down, QB sneak. Timeout. Close to field goal range. 1st and 10, quick WR out route for 6 yards, goes out of bounds. 2nd down, deep incompletion trying to end it right there. Third down, roll out scramble to the right side, hit WR on the sideline for 5 yards, get out of bounds, kick the field goal, win the game.
We’ve seen drive win the game like this all the time. Passer Rating conclusion: 2 for 5, 11 yards, 0.0 rating. You had the worst drive ever recorded, and you likely cost your team the game. QBR conclusion: it was a 2 minute drill in the 4th quarter, you converted 3 first downs with you arm and with your legs, got your team into field goal range with time left on the clock, excellent drive.
The problem with Passer rating isn’t that it ignores running stats, the problem is it ignore everything; every single tiny bit of context is completely irrelevant as long as you’re hitting your deep bombs when you’re down by 30.
