What Baker Mayfield accomplished as a senior at Oklahoma was the most efficient season by a quarterback in college football history. And then Kyler Murray and Tua Tagovailoa both topped it.



At Alabama, Tagovailoa finished with the best pass efficiency rating in FBS history. At Oklahoma, Murray won the Heisman Trophy like his predecessor and finished with the best total yards per play average in FBS history. Until last year, no quarterback who had put up at least 3,000 total yards in a season had averaged 10 yards per play. And then two did: Tagovailoa gained 10.1 per play and Murray gained 10.4. And thanks to them, quarterback play — or, more precisely, elite quarterback play — keeps rising to levels never before seen.



We explored this explosion in quarterback efficiency last summer by looking at how a very basic stat — a quarterback’s total yards per play, combining their passing and rushing attempts — helped capture the remarkable...