Let’s be honest: we all know Aaron Rodgers is great, so we don’t spend much time talking about him. Debating his ability is pointless, so we instead spend countless hours discussing Tony Romo’s intangibles, Tim Tebow’s throwing motion, Colin Kaepernick’s tattoos, and Joe Flacco’s eliteness. Talk radio dies when it discusses Aaron Rodgers: debating the Packers quarterback is as fun as watching paint dry and as illuminating as asking if water is wet.

But we’re doing a disservice to us all when we ignore how great Rodgers is. I mean, we spend lots of time chronicling the feats of Adrian Peterson and Calvin Johnson — why not Rodgers?

One way to measure Rodgers’ greatness is to look at passer rating. Now we know that passer rating is wildly overrated, so perhaps you shouldn’t be too impressed to hear that Rodgers has the highest passer rating in history. But consider: Rodgers has a career 104.9 passer rating, well ahead of Steve Young, who is second at 96.8. Chad Pennington sits at #13 on the career passer rating list (an example of why this metric is one I don’t use), but Young is closer to Pennington (90.1) than he is to Rodgers. But there’s an even better way to show Rodgers’ dominance in this statistic.

Passer rating is made up of four metrics. Let’s take a look at how Rodgers ranks in those four categories:



Completion Percentage

Among active quarterbacks, Rodgers is the career leader in completion percentage (in the next four tables, the age is the player’s age at the end of the 2012 season):

Interception Rate

Rodgers is also the active leader in interception percentage, and it’s not particularly close.

Rodgers is also the career leader in interception rate among all quarterbacks in football history.

Touchdown Percentage

What about touchdown rates? Rodgers has an death grip on the top spot in this statistic, too.

Rodgers just barely makes the top ten on the career list of touchdowns per pass attempt, but everyone ahead of him started their career before 1960.

Yards per Attempt

The fourth and most useful metric involved in calculating passer rating is yards per attempt. Guess who ranks first in this category among active passers?

On the career list, only Otto Graham (thanks to his AAFC numbers), Sid Luckman, and Norm Van Brocklin rank ahead of Rodgers.

So yeah, Aaron Rodgers is pretty good. However, let’s call a spade a spade: we have stacked the deck in Rodgers’ favor by looking at career rate statistics. In addition to climbing the career lists because he’s operating in a passer-friendly era, Rodgers has three other advantages working in his favor relative to even his contemporaries:

Now, here’s the good news: there is a way to control for all four of these variables (era, missing out on early years, missing out on late years, sack rate) and to properly evaluate Rodgers. If we use Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt as our statistic, we solve the last problem. And if we use ANY/A+ — the era-adjusted metric created by Pro-Football-Reference — we solve the first problem. And if we only look at quarterbacks during their ages 25 to 29 years, well, then we’ve solved them all.

So, drumroll please…. where does Rodgers rank in ANY/A+ for all passers since 1970 during his age 25-to-29 seasons? Let’s use a minimum of 50 starts and 1500 pass attempts, too:



Previous “Random Perspective On” Articles:

AFC East: Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New York Jets

AFC North: Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers

AFC South: Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars, Tennessee Titans

AFC West: Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers

NFC East: Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins

NFC North: Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings

NFC South: Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

NFC West: Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks, St. Louis Rams