PFF’s quarterback rankings are based on grading every player on every play and tapping into multiple years of data to project future performance. We go beyond just last season’s performances, and the grading works to isolate each quarterback’s performance from that of his supporting cast, making for more effective projections.
In a given year, quarterback performance is somewhat dependent on the pieces around him, and that’s why you see traditional statistics fluctuate quite a bit for the middle class of signal-callers from year to year. This concept may be truer than ever, as a large chunk of quarterbacks land in “Tier 3” here, the tier that houses those who are not perennial top-10-caliber quarterbacks but are certainly capable of top-10 production in a given year.