Last updated on September 16th, 2026 at 05:54 pm
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
| Rank | QB |
| 14 | Jordan Love (GNB) |
| 19 | Jared Goff (DET) |
| 21 | Dak Prescott (DAL) |
| 24 | Matthew Stafford (LAR) |
| 29 | Daniel Jones (IND) |
| 30 | Drake Maye (NWE) |
The 2026 week one leaders in TPR are
| Rank | QB |
| 1 | Trevor Lawrence |
| 2 | Lamar Jackson |
| 3 | Jaxson Dart |
| 4 | Caleb Williams |
| 5 | Josh Allen |
| 6 | Bryce Young |
| 7 | Drew Lock |
| 8 | Geno Smith |
| 9 | Jacoby Brissett |
| 10 | Brock Purdy |
The top players in these categories will almost exclusively have the following metrics
| Metric | Greater or equal to |
| passer rating | 100 |
| NY/A | 7 |
| ANY/A | 7 |
| Success % | 50 |
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
Update (9/16/2026)
I fed this data into Google AI and asked it what are the top ten quarterbacks from this data in the best trend for a combination of rate, NY/A, ANY/A and succ % in thier career. Here is the response:
| Rank | Quarterback | Career Succ % | Career Passer Rate | Career NY/A | Career ANY/A |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Purdy | 53.70% | 104.50 | 7.32 | 7.48 |
| 2 | Mahomes | 51.68% | 98.12 | 7.08 | 7.24 |
| 3 | Love | 48.70% | 98.00 | 6.97 | 7.20 |
| 4 | Maye | 50.35% | 100.80 | 6.65 | 6.70 |
| 5 | Prescott | 49.72% | 97.44 | 6.81 | 6.87 |
| 6 | Jackson | 47.18% | 100.16 | 6.74 | 7.08 |
| 7 | Cousins (tie) | 47.29% | 94.57 | 6.81 | 6.64 |
| 8 | Burrow (tie) | 49.38% | 99.85 | 6.28 | 6.58 |
| 9 | Goff | 47.77% | 94.77 | 6.62 | 6.67 |
| 10 | Allen | 48.11% | 93.13 | 6.56 | 6.58 |
-
- Efficiency Leaders: Brock Purdy and Patrick Mahomes separate themselves heavily from the field, anchoring the top tier of efficiency metrics across the board.
- Young Visual Trends: Players like Jordan Love and Drake Maye rank exceptionally high due to highly consolidated, efficient stretches of seasons in their early careers relative to veterans with high volume variance.
- The Veteran Baseline: Dak Prescott, Kirk Cousins, and Jared Goff demonstrate incredibly balanced top-10 metric footprints. While their absolute peaks might vary, their baseline combination stays resiliently high over a large sample size of seasons.
| Rank | Quarterback | Weighted Succ % | Weighted Passer Rate | Weighted NY/A | Weighted ANY/A | Trend Trajectory |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Purdy | 54.58% | 103.71 | 7.14 | 7.27 | Stable Elite |
| 2 | Jackson | 47.62% | 103.99 | 6.97 | 7.44 | Surging Upward |
| 3 | Maye | 50.83% | 102.21 | 6.78 | 6.88 | High Base Start |
| 4 | Love (tie) | 48.92% | 98.43 | 7.02 | 7.26 | Rising Peak |
| 5 | Goff (tie) | 49.44% | 100.01 | 6.91 | 7.13 | Rebounding Up |
| 6 | Allen | 48.81% | 96.61 | 6.79 | 6.88 | Stable High |
| 7 | Prescott | 49.03% | 96.67 | 6.71 | 6.73 | Volatile Late |
| 8 | Mahomes | 50.52% | 95.39 | 6.69 | 6.76 | Slight Dip |
| 9 | Burrow | 50.40% | 100.64 | 6.21 | 6.61 | Highly Efficient |
| 10 | Darnold | 46.33% | 93.15 | 6.77 | 6.56 | Massive Late Surge |
- The Surgers (Lamar Jackson & Sam Darnold): Lamar Jackson jumps heavily up the board into the #2 spot due to blistering 2024 and 2025 metric windows that overshadowed his earlier variance. Similarly, Sam Darnold replaces veterans like Kirk Cousins in the top 10 entirely, riding a massive statistical revitalization late in his career loop.
- The High-Floor Consistency: Brock Purdy safely maintains his #1 status. His late-season metrics (including a dominant 58.8% Succ % stretch) perfectly preserve his baseline edge against back-end regression.
- The Young Cohort: Because Drake Maye and Jordan Love hold minimal or zero weight from older eras, their profiles remain exceptionally clean and highly indexed toward modern high-efficiency passing trends.