Out with the Old, In with the New? What Week 1 Metrics Say About a Potential NFL QB Shift

It was a wild opening week one in the NFL! Compared to how we left off in 2025 there was a dramatic shift in direction. A trio of the old guard maintained their status. The Paradigm Shifters of Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and Brock Purdy continued their dominance in a metric combination that I will refer to as True Passer Rating (TPR). It is a look at the combined metrics of

Passer Rating,

Net Yards per Attempt (NY/A),

Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (ANY/A) and

Pro Football Reference’s Passing Success Rating.

The other 2025 leaders in TPR were either average or below average in the week one game. These regressing 2025 leaders with their week one TPR rank are

The 2026 week one leaders in TPR are

The top players in these categories will almost exclusively have the following metrics

If you look at teams in the Super Bowl era, a total of 83 teams out of 93 that met the passer rating and yards metrics had a winning record.

Here are graphs of the 2026 starting quarterbacks for the last nine seasons showing their TPR metrics – Quarterback plots for 9 seasons.

All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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