Lamar Jackson hates playing the Pittsburgh Steelers. This is not a reflection of the intensity of the rivalry between Baltimore and western Pennsylvania. It’s a nod to the fact the Steelers have bottled him up better than any other team in the league.
Sunday’s 18-16 loss at not-Heinz Field ceded control of the AFC North to Pittsburgh and ceded ground in the 2024 NFL MVP race to a host of hungry quarterbacks. Josh Allen, fresh off a superhuman touchdown run to put away the Kansas City Chiefs, leads the pack nipping at Jackson’s heels. But several more strong passers lie in wait, hoping not only to push their teams into the postseason but pile up accolades in the process.
Which quarterback has been the best through Week 11? Fortunately, we’ve got some advanced stats to help figure that out.
Expected points added is a concept that’s been around since 1970. It’s effectively a comparison between what an average quarterback could be expected to do on a certain down and what he actually did — and how it increased his team’s chances of scoring. The model we use comes from The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin and his RBSDM.com website, which is both wildly useful AND includes adjusted EPA, which accounts for defensive strength. It considers the impact of penalties and does not negatively impact passers for fumbles after a completion.
The other piece of the puzzle is completion percentage over expected (CPOE), which is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s a comparison of all the completions a quarterback would be expected to make versus the ones he actually did. Like EPA, it can veer into the negatives and higher is better. So if you chart all 35 primary quarterbacks — the ones who played at least 176 snaps through 11 weeks — you get a chart that looks like this:
Anthony Richardson dug a huge hole to start the season, but he’s begun to climb from it after last week’s win over the New York Jets. If you split up the rest of the league’s starters into tiers, it looks something like this:
Let’s see how this week’s rankings shook out.
