While working on a different post, I needed to derive a quick-and-dirty formula to identify the top 100 or so quarterbacks in NFL history. Here is how I went about doing that:

1) Calculate the Relative ANY/A of each quarterback in every season since 1950. ANY/A, of course, is Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, defined as (Gross Pass Yards + 20*Pass_TDs – 45*INTs – Sack Yards Lost) divided by (Pass Attempts + Sacks). For quarterback seasons before 1969, we do not have sack data, so that part of the analysis is ignored (I could have used estimated sack data, but I being lazy).

2) For each quarterback season, multiply each quarterback’s number of dropbacks by his Relative ANY/A to derive a Passing Value over Average metric.

3) Pro-rate non-16 game seasons to 16 games.

4) Calculate a career grade for each quarterback based on the sum of his best five seasons.

Then I realized that this data, while background material for a separate post, was probably interesting to folks in its own right. Hence today’s post. You should not be surprised to see that Peyton Manning is number one on this list. Here’s how to read his line. His best year came in 2004, when he produced 2113 Adjusted Net Yards over Average. Last year was his second best season — his gross numbers were more impressive, of course, but he produced “only” 2,031 ANY over average. Manning’s other three best years came in ’06, ’05, and ’03. Overall, he produced 8,115 Adjusted Net Yards over Average over his five best seasons, the best of any quarterback in this study (by a large margin). The table below shows the top 100 passers since 1950 (you can change the number of quarterbacks displayed in the dropdown box).

It’s worth remembering that even after adjusting for era, this list is still arguably biased in favor of players like Manning, Brady, and Brees. That’s because today’s quarterbacks pass more often, and passing more often enables a quarterback to amass more above-average value. We can adjust for that by looking at a quarterback’s RANY/A (and not his value over average) in his best five seasons (but only consider seasons where the quarterback had at least 14 pass attempts per team game). If you average each quarterback’s RANY/A in his five best seasons, Manning drops down to number two:

I doubt many would have predicted that Norm Van Brocklin would end up on top of this list! Van Brocklin is no slouch, of course, but he does benefit by focusing just on rate stats. In 1950, Van Brocklin led the league in AY/A while throwing passes to Tom Fears, Elroy Hirsch and Glenn Davis. That year the Rams set the record for points scored in a season, although Van Brocklin shared quarterback duties with fellow HOF-in-waiting Bob Waterfield. In 1951, Van Brocklin matched his incredible AY/A efficiency, but finished second in the league to… Waterfield. Van Brocklin had excellent seasons in ’53 and ’54, too, and then had a dominant season with the Eagles in 1960. That year, Van Brocklin became the first — and remains the only — quarterback to win NFL championships with two different teams.

Finally, I thought it might be interesting to look at the worst 100 quarterbacks using the same Value over Average statistic from the first table.

Mark Sanchez comes in as the… well, let’s be careful about what we’re saying. We’re not saying he’s the worst quarterback ever, just that he makes me feel like this. The technical explanation of his place on the list: the five (which were really just four) “best” seasons of his career produced more below-average value than any other quarterback in their five “best” seasons. In other words, he should have been benched a lot earlier.