The 25 top-10 QBs in the NFL

When someone says Geno Smith is a "top-10" QB, what do they actually mean? Seaside Joe 1823

In 2001, the American Film Institute polled over 1,500 people in the industry to create a list of the top-100 movies from the first 100 years of cinema. The top-10 was Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather, Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, The Wizard of Oz, The Graduate, On the Waterfront, Schindler’s List, and Singin’ in the Rain.

When they did it again 10 years later there were some significant changes, like Raging Bull going from 24th to 4th and Vertigo literally doing the opposite of its namesake by jumping from 61st to 9th! Going the wrong way were The Graduate and On the Waterfront, both falling from the top-10 to the late teens.

Now I ask you, What the hell could a movie do to be so much better or a little bit worse over a decade of not changing a single frame?

People love to rank things, especially art, probably because it helps us understand ourselves better. “What does it say about me if Singin’ in the Rain is my favorite movie?” or “If I think Raging Bull is a borefest?” I’ve seen all of AFI’s top-10 movies, and most of the top-100, and I would keep a lot of the same films in there but would change plenty of others. We all would; these lists are subjective and the opportunity for fans to debate my favorites vs. your favorites despite art’s subjectivity is half of the point to make a list at all.

When will Citizen Kane’s reign of terror as “the best movie ever made” finally be put to rest by the appointment of the true champion…Wedding Crashers.

Sports fans love top-10 lists just as much as fans of movies, TV, and music, but with one key difference: For some reason, we think our lists ARE objective. That there is such a thing as a DEFINITIVE top-10 quarterback, top-5 running back, or a “Wide Receiver University”.

Nobody gets to say what the best movie ever made was (although I take issue with Fargo not making the tenth anniversary list) and yet I see more and more people using this term — “he’s a Top-XX quarterback” — as if that’s as simple as saying which teams ranked in the top-10 of passing yards last season. It’s as though because sports have stats that observers have an ability to rank players and teams as if that is just as simple as totaling yards, touchdowns, sacks, and interceptions.

This is what analytics claims to do but their stats are just as subjective as passer rating or yards per play allowed: Someone had to decide what the mathematical formula was for QBR, EPA, DVOA, and so on. When it comes to PFF grades or pass rush win rate, for example, someone has to decide “this is a win” or “this is a loss”; “this is a good play” or “this is a bad play”.

Every time someone tries to tell you that a player is “X amount good” or “Y amount bad” because of their ranking in a statistical category, they are inevitably going to leave out important context that would otherwise wipe away the meaning of the numbers:

“Brock Purdy ranked first in QBR but Patrick Mahomes ranked eighth; Gardner Minshew had a better QBR than Geno Smith”

How were those numbers impacted by their respective supporting casts? Or coaching staffs? Or strength of schedule? Or weather? What about injuries? What about the amount that the numbers were changed based on maybe the difference of 10 plays over the course of the season, like if a quarterback randomly had three touchdowns with 80+ YAC each? What if a cornerback fell down and a safety blew an assignment and therefore bumped that QB’s ranking significantly? What if receivers dropped three passes in the season that would have been touchdowns and increased his ranking by five spots?

Or how about a question as simple as this: Do you even know how EPA or QBR are calculated? Without even knowing, how do YOU know that YOU agree with the formula to calculate it? It was made by a human being and even if you think that it’s a complete stat — there is no humility in this sentence by ESPN’s Brian Burke in explaining QBR in 2016, “QBR incorporates ALL of a quarterback’s contributions to winning” — how do you actually KNOW?

I think it should be obvious that we don’t know.

Even leaving out the incalculable number of variables that made Tom Brady the most successful quarterback in history or Patrick Mahomes the best of his era (I like to compare quarterbacks to golfers or tennis players and say that just as there was only one Tiger Woods for many years, there is also usually only one or two truly “elite” quarterbacks at a time), football is as much a game of strategy as it is a game of execution.

So when a single stat attempts to grade or rank a player based on play success, it ignores so much of the game including: Could there have been a better play call by the coaches? Did every single offensive lineman block his assignment sufficiently (something we couldn’t always know by watching film)? Is it possible a receiver literally forgot the play and ran the wrong route? Does QBR have an “He’s facing Aaron Donald today” somewhere in the formula?

The analytics community makes claims that they can’t backup, a mission to find objective stats that “prove” how good a player is or isn’t, but the game is just as enjoyable without attempting to fill this hole in our paradigm of “Who is a top-10 quarterback?”

And then from there I tell you this:

The question we should be answering isn’t “WHO”…It’s “WHAT IS A TOP-10 QUARTERBACK?”

Let’s start with the statement “Geno Smith is a top-10 quarterback”…

When? On what day? Are you talking about he’s top-10 yesterday, today, or tomorrow? There’s a significant different in any of those answers. Jalen Hurts was a top-10 quarterback yesterday, Brock Purdy is a top-10 quarterback today, and Trevor Lawrence might be a top-10 quarterback tomorrow.

The list has to change based on the context of the premise.

Then I ask, how often is he a top-10 quarterback? Is he top-10 for all 17 games of the season or is he top-3 in four games, top-8 in five games, average for five games, and terrible for three games? Is he Dak Prescott: top-5 in September and bottom-5 in January? That’s as important to know as whether or not a guy is even able to start or not.

And against what teams is he top-10? Is he top-5 against bottom-5 defenses and bottom-5 against top-5 defenses? Geno could be a top-5 quarterback against the entire rest of the league, if he’s a bottom-10 QB against NFC West teams it wouldn’t even matter. That’s essentially what sunk Russell Wilson: He was never as effective against the Rams as he was against every other team. If Russ could have been a .500 QB against the Rams, Seattle would have won more division titles and played more playoff home games, increasing the odds of the Seahawks finally getting back to the NFC Championship or Super Bowl.

For me, Wilson was consistently a top-six quarterback during his tenure with the Seahawks. But realistically with hindsight and a better understanding that I’m mostly an idiot, the ranking always had to change based on what the actual question was that we were trying to answer: Wilson’s teams are 17-4 all-time against the 49ers, 11-8-1 against the Cardinals, and 8-13 against the Rams.

Wilson had a passer rating of 100.8 outdoors and his teams win 63% of those games, but that drops to 91.6 and 29% in a dome. Statistically, he’s one of the best fourth quarter players of all-time, but far less effective and barely average in the third quarter. Just the same, “How good is Geno Smith?” is going to have many different answers because we don’t know what the actual question is; like Russ, he’s going to be better at some things than others.

In 2023, Geno had one touchdown, four interceptions in the third quarter vs. eight touchdowns and one interception in the fourth. Geno was better in 2022 than he was in 2023. Unlike Russ, he’s played better in a dome than outdoors. And last season, the Seahawks went 3-6 in his starts against the NFC West and AFC North but 5-1 in his other starts.

“Where does Geno Smith rank in the NFL?” IT’S NOT A COMPLETE QUESTION!

Over the past few months, I’ve seen tweets, articles, and YouTube videos that have called Geno a “top-5”, “top 8-12”, “top-10”, and “top-15” quarterback. Setting aside just how quickly people are willing to switch between him being “top-8” and “top-15” depending on the day and the argument that they’re trying to support at that particular moment, what really gets me is that it is so easy to throw out an arbitrary ranking and not feel the need to show your work.

When I read or hear people say stuff about a quarterback or any player, “Well, he’s top-10, he’s top-10, he’s top-10!!!” it’s not so much that I care where they rank the player—as I said, this process can be as subjective as ranking your favorite movies and I don’t even know what your context is, but most likely none of these people are thinking about a picture bigger than the ambiguous “in the grand scheme of things”—it’s that if you escape the local bubble and go around to fans of all 32 teams, you notice that there aren’t 10 top-10 quarterbacks anymore.

There are at least 25.

At least 25 “top-10” quarterbacks in the NFL at any given time. What does it matter that a biased observer—including some Seahawks reporters and Seahawks fans with wide national coverage who I’m not naming right now—randomly inserts the local starting quarterback into an unlisted “top-10” or “top-12” when I can go find the same claim for quarterbacks of at least 25 teams?

Can we find them right now? We need not even look much deeper than some more “official” lists to find out that opinions will vary wildly on who the mysterious “top-10 quarterbacks” are in the NFL today.

All the many top-10 quarterbacks in the NFL

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Nick Shook’s top-10 QBs at the end of the regular season: Lamar Jackson, Dak Prescott, Josh Allen, Matthew Stafford, Tua Tagovailoa, Jared Goff, Brock Purdy, C.J. Stroud, Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins (Geno Rank: 18)

Shook says this list is based “solely on play from the 2023 regular season”…Okay, but you still did this and have to live with it forever that you have Mahomes ninth. He has Geno only one spot ahead of Justin Fields, two ahead of Russell Wilson.

The Ringer’s top-10 QBs (last updated end of regular season): Mahomes, Lamar, Justin Herbert, Allen, Dak, Joe Burrow, Aaron Rodgers, Stafford, Trevor Lawrence, Kyler Murray (Geno Rank: 11) Steven Ruiz ranks by: Creativity/Arm Talent/Timing/Pocket Presence/Decision Making/Accuracy. With five QBs on this list who weren’t on Shook’s list, that makes 15 top-10 quarterbacks so far and none of them are Geno Smith, for whatever that’s worth.

ESPN’s top-10 by QBR: Purdy, Dak, Allen, Lamar, Herbert, Stafford, Cousins, Mahomes, Jordan Love, Tua (Geno rank: 14) Add Jordan Love to make it 16 quarterbacks. Just missing the top-10 were Jared Goff and Jalen Hurts.

FanDuel’s “way too early 2024 rankings” top-10: Mahomes, Allen, Lamar, Burrow, C.J. Stroud, Stafford, Herbert, Love, Dak, Jalen Hurts (Geno rank: 13) There is Hurts and don’t forget Stroud, that makes 18 quarterbacks who are top-10 quarterbacks. We haven’t landed on one with Geno yet.

PFF’s “Bayesian QB rankings” for 2023: Lamar, Dak, Tua, Purdy, Allen, Hurts, Stafford, Stroud, Geno, Mahomes. There you go, Geno Smith at ninth, ranked ahead of Patrick Mahomes. Trevor Lawrence is 11th, Goff is 12th, and look at that number 12 is…Mason Rudolph. Seems like a good system! At least it’s a system that gets us to 19 QBs.

SportingNews: Lamar, Purdy, Dak, Allen, Hurts, Mahomes, Burrow, Joe Flacco, Rodgers, Cousins (Geno rank: 24)

Luckily we’ve managed to add Joe Flacco to our list as #20 of the top-10. Here, Geno is ranked behind Anthony Richardson, Fields, Goff, Baker Mayfield, and Deshaun Watson. We can take issue with the reasoning here perhaps, but can anyone deny that there could be a list where this makes sense under certain context or if we’re just asking: “Would you rather have Anthony Richardson on your roster right now or Geno Smith?”

Reddit Poll: There are no new names in the top-10, but I just want to add for context that the average /r/NFL fan has ranked Geno Smith 21st, behind Flacco at 19, Russ at 20, and just ahead of Derek Carr at 22. So far we have 20 “top-10” quarterbacks, can we find at least another five?

This twitter account with surprisingly a lot of traction has Jared Goff—who was so close so many times—at ninth overall:

The earlier screenshot of Ian Hartitz, who has 160k followers, implies Baker Mayfield is at least a borderline top-10 QB. One year ago, Baker was weighing maybe one or two offers in free agency and took the only one that wasn’t to be a backup. That gets us to 22.

Here’s a fan who compiled data that would give him the formula he needed to “prove” that Derek Carr was a top-10 QB in 2023. Now we’re at 23. Left out this year but on everyone’s top-10 going into 2022, Russell Wilson still ranked top-10 in a few categories and he was actually the most prolific QB in the fourth quarter despite being benched for two games. I could argue that Russ goes back to top-10 next season if he signs with the right team. There’s 24.

I only need one more to get to 25 and from here I’d say, “Ask half of Bears fans if Fields is a top-10 QB”’; “What if we’re talking about the future: Richardson and Bryce Young spring to mind”; “In the recent past, Giants fans and some in the media said New York couldn’t lose Daniel Jones under any circumstances, while two years ago the Browns gave up everything for Watson”; and finally, are Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, and Jayden Daniels “top-10” quarterbacks if we’re simply going by ranking quarterbacks for “the next five years”?

I could say that there at least 32 top-10 quarterbacks. Now that’s what I call..It’s a Wonderful Life.