The NFL’s Divisional Playoffs this year illustrate clearly the importance of having an elite quarterback — or at least elite quarterback play. Of the eight teams remaining at this stage of the postseason, five have starting quarterbacks ranking among the top ten in DVOA and four in the top five of that metric.
Even more illustrative is the EPA+CPOE composite from RBSDM.com. Among the leading QBs in that statistic (filtering out when a team’s win probability is less than 4% or more than 96%), each of the top six QBs in the NFL are on teams that are still alive.