Week 5 Bayesian Quarterback Rankings

Stafford rising quickly, and this (should be) Purdy-hater capitulation week

No Cooper Kupp, no problem for Matthew Stafford

I like to think of my Bayesian quarterback rankings as a check on perceptions, which sometimes are more correct than the cold, hard evidence, but more often not. For more details on the methodology and how I’ve leveraged Bayesian updating in the past, check out my rankings post leading into Week 2.

For those of you looking for the Adjusted Quarterback Efficiency (AQE) numbers, it might be a week (or two) before I have the data to produce them. I’m figuring it all out now and appreciate the patience. I am producing a slimmed down version that I’m calling Luck-Adjusted Efficiency.

I don’t think it’s as good as my quarterback adjustments, but PFF grades do a decent job at quantifying a lot of the high variance factors that shouldn’t be credited/debited from the quarterback’s performance. Brock Purdy still has the biggest gap between his efficiency and PFF grading, but both are on the rise. My luck-adjusted numbers from last week show that he’s been lucky with interceptions, drops and fumble recoveries. That said, he’s still, easily, I still view him as top-10 quarterback this season no matter how you measure it.

On the bad luck side, we still have Trevor Lawrence with the second best grade and flat EPA performance. The truth lies between for me.

WEEK 5 PROJECTED EFFICIENCY

These results are the ranking for the go-forward projections of quarterback efficiency this season. I also included the EPA per play rankings for each quarterback over the last six seasons (minimum 250 dropbacks in previous years, 30 in 2023) so you can see the evidence going into the projections.

Older data is decayed over time, so the 2023 EPA per play data matters more than those from pre-2020. That said, older data can’t be fully discounted, or else you miss bounce-back performers of great quarterback returning to form, like Aaron Rodgers in 2020 and 2021.

I’m assuming all the starters are good to go this week, but there’s some chance Matthew Stafford won’t be able to go this week.