2026 NFL Quarterback Rankings for Every Week 1 Starting QB

No position in all of team sports is more important than quarterback.

Quarterbacks touch the ball on every single play. An elite QB can drag an average roster deep into the playoffs, while a bad signal caller can doom an otherwise loaded roster.

In my NFL Power Ratings, quarterbacks reign supreme — by a huge margin. I count QB as worth over 40% of the entire offensive unit ranking and almost 25% of the overall roster rank. They're just that important.

Consider former MVP Josh Allen.

With Allen healthy, the Bills rank in the top five offensively and top 10 overall in my system, bona fide Super Bowl contenders. But replace Allen with a league-average starter, and the Bills drop to around 18th on offense, a fringe playoff contender. Give Buffalo the worst QB in the league and it drops to bottom 10, largely irrelevant and out of the playoff picture altogether.

That's why QBs get their own column, and it's why we'll check in on these rankings again all throughout season. Unlike many recent seasons, there's not a ton of turnover, with just six NFL teams starting an Opening Day quarterback in 2026 that did not start last season — and most of those six started a chunk of last season anyway. That means many familiar names from last year's column, but plenty of new ranks.

So what QB would you want right now for one season on a new NFL team, agnostic to contract, surrounding talent, and scheme? That's the question we'll answer today at the league's most important position. These are my 2026 NFL Quarterback Rankings, from 1 to 32.

2026 NFL Quarterback Rankings

Tier I — The Best of the Best

1. Josh Allen (Last Year: 2)

2. Patrick Mahomes (Last Year: 1)

I've written this column for years, and Patrick Mahomes has ranked No. 1 for seven straight Opening Days — until this one.

I noted last year that Josh Allen should probably be No. 1 but that Mahomes felt invincible until proven otherwise. Well, consider it proven after a 6-11 Chiefs season and an offseason surgery to repair a torn ACL.

The truth is that there really isn't a good case against Allen at the top anymore. The physical tools are obvious — both as a passer and as a runner — and he's largely cut down the mistakes and been mostly great in the playoffs.

Don't believe me? Allen may be 8-7 in the playoffs, but he's responsible for 38 touchdowns and just six interceptions in those games. He ranks first all time in playoff yards and touchdowns per game, as well as TD-to-turnover ratio.

Allen regressed in sack avoidance last season, and he ended with a clunker in the loss against Denver. But he also finished top three in MVP voting for a fifth time in six seasons, and it would surprise no one to see him add to his tally this fall.

But it's not like Mahomes took a tumble. He's down just one spot, and still in this top tier.

There's real reason to be concerned, though.

Mahomes is coming off the first major injury of his career, after finding a lot of his value last season as a runner. He's also on a three-year downswing of serious drop-off to around fringe top-10 in go-to QB metrics like Expected Points Added (EPA), Completion Percentage Over Expected (CPOE), and Success Rate (SR) after more or less leading those stats for the rest of his career.

Mahomes had 20 Turnover Worthy Plays in 14 games, with most quality QBs closer to one per game, and he had his worst season ever throwing his trademark deep ball.

Consider that Mahomes lost eight games last season — even with the knee injury ending things prematurely — after losing only 23 the entire rest of his career! That's twice as many losses as Mahomes has in the playoffs ever, and that's why he still ranks this high.

For his career, Mahomes is still 17-4 in the playoffs with 5,814 yards, 46 TDs, and 10 interceptions — basically a full MVP season in the games that matter most.

It's fair to have some concerns, but until those playoff numbers drop, he's going to be just fine.

Even during this three-year downswing, Mahomes is still averaging a 10.3-win season with zero run game, bad receivers, and a fading offensive line, plus a 6-1 record in the playoffs with a ring. That'll do.

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Tier II — AFC North Bites Back

3. Joe Burrow (Last Year: 3)

4. Lamar Jackson (Last Year: 4)

This is the exact same second tier I had last season in the exact same order, and the truth is that we saw plenty of movement from the quarterbacks in the 5-to-20 range, but these four guys at the top all had down seasons.

I'm still fine believing in Joe Burrow. He's as accurate a QB as anyone in the league with maybe the best touch, and he does a great job limiting mistakes. So it's just a steady slew of positive plays.

Burrow has an elite PFF grade of 92 or better in four of the last five years, all but 2023 when he played hurt all season. Even last year playing hurt much of the year, he had the No. 2 PFF grade.

The injuries don't really concern me. Turf toe, finger, wrist, broken ribs, a broken hand… these are fluky, bad luck injuries. There's no reason they portend any future injury.

Burrow benefits from throwing to the NFL's best WR duo in Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, but he's been hampered by terrible blocking, poor play calling, a lackluster run game, and a terrible defense.

Burrow is partly responsible for those issues and he needs to cut his sack rate, but he's elite under pressure.

Cincinnati quietly found a run game toward the end of last season, and now the offensive line returns all five starters for the first time in Burrow's career.

Reports out of training camp also claim Burrow is finally taking fewer snaps from shotgun, giving the offense a few more easy buttons and ways to help Joe Cool out.

Burrow is the only QB in this top four without an MVP trophy. If those little things swing his direction, that could finally change this season.

I'm considering 2025 effectively a lost season for Lamar Jackson.

If you're looking for some underlying metric to tell you it wasn't all so bad, I'm not sure you'll find it. Jackson was mediocre at best last fall.

He ran for just 349 yards and had an awful 10.7% sack rate — both career worsts — and he finished somewhere around 15th or 20th in many of the major QB metrics, basically average at best.

Is that really all that surprising, though?

Jackson hurt his hamstring in September, then he injured his knee after returning, and it couldn't be any clearer that those leg injuries basically cost him his entire season. Every stat that fell off is a pretty obvious direct correlation to a QB that can't move like his usual cheat-code self, with a cascading effect to everything else.

If that reduced mobility lingers into a healthy new season, we should be concerned, and it's worth wondering how Jackson will fit into new offensive coordinator Declan Doyle's system — and Jackson will always have the big playoff questions until he reaches a Super Bowl.

We've seen how steep the drop-off can be if the mobility goes, but at age 29, Jackson should be fine.

Jackson is 76-31 for his career, a 12.1-win pace. Don't overreact to one outlier year of leg injuries.

Tier III — Great Regardless of Surroundings

5. Jordan Love (Last Year: 6)

6. Drake Maye (Last Year: 12)

7. Dak Prescott (Last Year: 8)

This is where my rankings start to get interesting — including a name you might have noticed missing.

These are the only other three quarterbacks left on the board that I'm confident can be great regardless of their surroundings — lackluster coaching, poor blocking, unreliable weapons, or whatever else comes their way.

It feels like the media is finally coming around on Jordan Love, but I've had him top-6 three straight times.

Every key Love metric is elite. He ranked 2nd in the league in EPA per play, 3rd in CPOE, and 4th in PFF grade. He's also the all-time NFL leader in sack rate at just 4.3%.

Love's mistakes are loud and ugly, but they don't happen as often as it may seem. He's elite at big-play hunting and doesn't even get to do it all that often on a Packers team that hasn't had great blocking or receivers and tends to skew a bit too run-heavy.

Love has exactly nine wins in each of his three years as a starter, and he's 1-3 in the playoffs, though he ranks 4th in EPA per play there too during that stretch so he's doing his job, but let down by coaching, defense, and special teams.

On a roster that could see similar challenges this season, can Love take the next step?

If Drake Maye takes another step in 2026, he'll end up in the top tier with an MVP trophy by next fall.

Maye would have been my MVP last fall after finishing top-2 in the NFL in EPA, CPOE, and Success Rate despite below-average blocking and poor receivers. Maye carried the Patriots offense all the way to the Super Bowl in his first full year as a starter.

Not that I was surprised! Look what I wrote about Maye in last year's article:

I'm early putting Drake Maye in my top 12, but I'm calling my shot. I think he could end up in the 5-to-7 tier with Herbert, Love, and Daniels by the end of the season.

Maye has all the physical tools — and he actually led the league in scramble yards last season, an underrated runner. He still needs to improve under pressure, and that's where things went sideways in the playoffs, but now he's got a real set of receivers this season with A.J. Brown and Romeo Doubs in tow.

The only reason Maye isn't even higher yet is because we need to see it for another season.

Then, there's Dak Prescott, who's always around this number for me but moves up into this tier for the first time with the guys that can succeed in any setting.

"Prescott was throwing to CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens last year," some might argue. He also faced the third-most pressures in the NFL but led the league in PFF rating under pressure, and that shouldn't be particularly surprising since he's been top-5 in PFF grade in two of the last three seasons.

Prescott also ranked first in PFF grade in the clutch, a sparkling 88 grade (out of 100) on 145 dropbacks.

Yes, the playoff record is bad at 2-5. That's why Prescott is in the third tier, not the top two. But at 83-55-1 lifetime, that means a 10.2-win pace for his career.

Somehow Prescott has become this era's Tony Romo, a top quarter of the league QB year after year but overlooked and unfairly criticized because of that star on the side of his helmet.

Tier IV — The Litmus Tests

8. Matthew Stafford (Last Year: 14)

9. Justin Herbert (Last Year: 5)

10. Brock Purdy (Last Year: 18)

11. Trevor Lawrence (Last Year: 13)

12. Baker Mayfield (Last Year: 15)

This is a tier of quarterbacks I have every year in this 8-to-12 range. These guys are litmus tests — their level of play tells you the level of their team surroundings.

Give them great blocking, good weapons, and steady playcalling and these guys can play MVP-level ball. But when the situation isn't pretty around them, litmus test QBs see their play fall off just as quickly.

That's why I have reigning MVP Matthew Stafford all the way down here.

There's no question Stafford was awesome last season. He led the league in deep pass attempts with 85 and had a perfect 100 PFF grade on them — his 47 Big Time Throws led the league by 16, 52% higher than the next-closest QB.

Stafford led the league in first downs (236), passing yards (4707) and passing TDs (46). He won MVP for a reason — and we bet and cashed it at +5000 last June!

But it's hard to be in a much better situation than Stafford.

All five of his linemen ranked top 10 in PFF grade at their position, so he had great blocking and an elite rushing attacking along with stud receivers in Puka Nacua and Davante Adams, maybe the best playcaller in the league in Sean McVay, and a steady reliable defense to boot.

Stafford has been awesome with all those things on his side. But many quarterbacks would — and based on my ranking and tiering, I am indeed suggesting that the seven guys above him would perform just as well.

For some reason with Stafford, everyone seems to remember the sizzle throws and red-hot stretches but forget how inconsistent his play can be.

Last year was only Stafford's third time ever with a top-8 PFF grade, compared to 11 times between 9th and 21st. He has only two seasons with more than 11 wins, and he's had a winning season in under half his 17 seasons and just finally cracked .500 ball for the first time in his career at 120-118-1. He's also been unreliable in the playoffs at just 21st in Success Rate over the last four postseasons.

It's easy to forget that Stafford is 38 years old and might be one big hit away from calling it a career with his injury history — don't forget, the Rams used a first-round pick on Ty Simpson for a reason.

When everything is perfect, Stafford can be as good as anyone — and we saw it last year! But things tend to fall off quickly when not everything is perfectly in equilibrium, and I'll take my chances with the seven guys ranked above him.

Believe it or not, 8th is actually the highest I've ever ranked Stafford. But this is my lowest for Justin Herbert.

Herbert's tools are undeniable, and it's equally undeniable that he's had a rough go the last few years with terrible blocking and little help around him offensively. Maybe that's why Herbert still hasn't put together that one great year, but the truth is that most metrics are dicey on even getting Herbert into the top 10.

Metrics aren't everything, but Herbert also has a 9.3-win pace for his career and an ugly 0-3 record in the playoffs, where he's been downright abysmal.

With a great and finally healthy line and new OC Mike McDaniel around, this is probably Herbert's best ecosystem yet in the NFL. It's put up or shut up time, and I suspect this will end up a one-year penalty drop before Herbert proves the naysayers wrong and bounces back up into the next tier.

I can't believe I'm actually ranking Brock Purdy as a top-10 NFL quarterback, but here we are.

The metrics will always back you on Purdy. In Kyle Shanahan's system, the metrics would tell you Purdy is a top-3 QB, maybe the best. He routinely finishes at or near the top of the league in EPA, CPOE, Success Rate, pick your poison.

His career 8.6 YPA is insane, as is his career 6.2% TD rate, and he's played at an 11.3-win pace with at least one playoff win every season of his career.

But, but, but … Kyle Shanahan!

Shanahan's system certainly helps, but I'm finally ready to admit there's something more. Purdy is invincible in a clean pocket, but he was also top-3 in PFF grade under pressure last season and has gotten really good at navigating pressure and showing real creation skills that not many quarterbacks have.

His 9% pressure-to-sack rate is elite, and that creation ability leaped out when the 49ers had to play with Mac Jones instead of Purdy for stretches last season. Jones won games — much like Jimmy Garoppolo and others have under Shanahan — but Purdy gives this team a level of play those guys never approached.

It's time to believe.

Trevor Lawrence finally has us believing too after putting everything together in the final months of his first season under Liam Coen.

The season-long numbers weren't particularly great, hurt by an awful 10% drop rate, but the eye test showed a clear progression for Lawrence en route to a 13-4 season. And you especially saw a difference over the final seven games, when Lawrence played at a full-season pace of 4,500 passing yards and 54 touchdowns.

Only one of those final seven games came against a playoff team, though.

However, it's also worth remembering that Lawrence went toe-to-toe with Josh Allen in the playoffs, tallying three touchdowns and holding a lead until the final minute. Lawrence looks set to take another step forward in Year 2 under Coen.

Rounding out this tier is Baker Mayfield, the one guy in this group that had an awful situation last season.

It's easy to forget now, but Baker was a legit MVP candidate for the first third of last season, leading the Bucs to a 5-1 record without Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, while pulling off dramatic wins against the Texans, Seahawks, and 49ers.

Then, Mayfield hurt his shoulder and the wheels fell off, dropping to 27th in EPA per play for the rest of the season, and now that's all anyone seems to remember about his season.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, and maybe at both extremes too.

At his best, Mayfield plays like a top-10 quarterback, with the moxie and know-how to scramble around and make those winning plays. But at his worst, Mayfield is a ticking time bomb with a flurry of mistakes waiting to be launched, and that worst still seems to come far too often.

Maybe there are just too many bad plays. Mayfield's career 2.6% interception rate and 6.8% sack rate are both poor, and he led the league in fumbles both of the last two seasons and led it in Turnover Worthy Plays last season with 28.

But with the mistakes come upside, and you need upside to win in the NFL. And this season, with a much healthier offense and an elite line and good set of receivers, don't be surprised to see Mayfield prove himself as a litmus test for a better Bucs ecosystem and show himself to be a top QB once again.

Tier V — The Upside Swings

13. Caleb Williams (Last Year: 17)

14. Jayden Daniels (Last Year: 7)

15. Jalen Hurts (Last Year: 9)

16. C.J. Stroud (Last Year: 11)

17. Kyler Murray (Last Year: 16)

This is another perennial tier, usually right smack dab in the middle of the quarterback rankings, and this tier always ends up looking the dumbest by year's end.

Everyone in this tier will wind up either five spots too high or too low — the question is which direction — but it's worth the risk on the upside, rather than settling on one of the remaining options below.

I like Caleb Williams' upside the most.

Williams had a really poor rookie season, showing all his college foibles, but there were two huge flaws that were hard to overlook: he held the ball way too long, struggling under pressure and creating negative plays, and he had a truly awful deep ball.

Amazing what one year under Ben Johnson can do.

In one year with Johnson, Williams improved his sack rate from 10.8% to 4.1%, dropped his time to throw from 4.2 to 3.2 seconds and took his pressure-to-sack rate from a league-worst 28% all the way down to 11%. That's a remarkable one-year leap for your biggest glaring flaw, and Williams also improved when he did see pressure and saw a leap forward in scrambling too.

The deep ball also saw a huge leap forward. Williams ranked top 5 in deep-ball volume in each of his two seasons, but he saw a PFF grade of 56 on deep balls as a rookie, 36th among qualifying QBs, and leapt to 96 on deep balls last season, top-5 in the league.

The metrics will say this is too high for Williams, and I honestly thought so too before my deep dive, but it's impossible to ignore the crazy improv skills, the impossible arm angles, and the cannon arm.

There's an overreliance on big plays, so Williams needs to learn to eat his vegetables and cash some singles here and there instead of hunting home runs — everyone remembers the two wins against the Packers but conveniently forgets how bad Williams and the Bears looked before the late comebacks — but the skill level is tantalizing, and I want in on the upward trajectory under Johnson.

It feels like Jayden Daniels is a touch overlooked after a terrible, lost sophomore season that was a bit too reminiscent of Robert Griffin III for everyone's liking.

Daniels was awful last season — hurt all year with a terrible supporting cast — but his rookie season was good enough to put him top-5 on my MVP ballot and land him at 7th in last year's rankings. That season was better than any season Williams has had, but the trajectory is obviously in the wrong direction.

The big question is how much Daniels and his slight frame can avoid injury. Knee, hamstring, and elbow injuries plagued his 2025 season, and with so much of Daniels' value wrapped up in his legs, that makes him volatile and a true wildcard.

There aren't many wildcards bigger than Jalen Hurts in 2026, and I'm not sure I struggled ranking any quarterback more than him.

With 14, 11, 12, and 13 wins the last four seasons and a Super Bowl MVP, you'd think Hurts should be a lock for top-5 in an exercise like this. But look at QB rankings around the media landscape and Hurts is often ranked even lower than this, typically in the begrudging 18th-to-20th range.

I personally think the media has gone too far the other direction on Hurts. Even in last year's mid-off under OC Kevin Patullo, Hurts ranked 9th in PFF grade — his fifth straight season among the top-14 — and he tallied 33 touchdowns with only six interceptions and led Philadelphia to 11 wins and the playoffs.

The weaknesses are glaring.

Hurts has always been bad under pressure and isn't reliable as a thrower, and he's adding less value as a runner these days with his unwillingness to call designed runs. He continues to be allergic to throwing over the middle of the field, which should be interesting with a new offense and multiple new weapons built to live exactly there.

This feels like a huge swing year for Hurts.

I don't love the fit in new OC Sean Mannion's offense, and I've never really fully believed in Hurts. If I'm right and he struggles, it could be the end of this era in Philly, maybe for him and/or Nick Sirianni, and Hurts could become a bad contract the Eagles are ready to move on from.

Or hey, maybe he'll play like he has in both Super Bowls and bounce right back up to the top of the litmus tier.

Speaking of guys that struggled last season: C.J. Stroud.

When we last saw Stroud, he was putting in one of the most horrific playoff QB performances in recent memory, single-handedly sabotaging what might have been the best team in the AFC, and that's becoming more and more regular these days for Stroud.

After a surprisingly great rookie season, Stroud got worse at virtually everything as a sophomore and then was even worse in some respects last season, plummeting to an ugly 31st in PFF grade, just ahead of Tua Tagovailoa and J.J. McCarthy, for perspective.

Stroud has at least nine regular-season wins and a playoff victory in all three seasons of his career, but it might be time to start wondering if that's because of Stroud's play or in spite of it. It's also worth wondering how much of Stroud's positive early numbers were fluky play-action-boosted Shanahan-tree type numbers a la Tua or early career Purdy in Bobby Slowik's system.

It's true that Stroud isn't getting much help, with zero run game and a line that is certainly offensive, but those things don't look set to change this year either.

For some quarterbacks, when the yips start to settle in as the pressure mounts, there's just no turning back. Stroud has the wins and the pedigree, but the top-5 upside has never really felt there.

I'm taking a conservative approach in ranking Stroud this low until he proves otherwise.

As for Kyler Murray, I'm giving him one more shot.

Murray is only averaging 10 games over the last four years with just one healthy season, and I'm not convinced his size and play style can hold up. But he's also never had much help in Arizona and has never played in such a good setup as he has in Minnesota, with outstanding weapons and a great coach and defense.

We learned precious little last year from Murray, and he's never won more than nine games in a season, but when he's been healthy and in a decent ecosystem, he's played .500 ball.

Can Minnesota's structure parlay that into double-digit wins and a franchise QB? We'll see.

Tier VI — Win With, But Not Because Of

18. Jared Goff (Last Year: 19)

19. Sam Darnold (Last Year: 28)

20. Bo Nix (Last Year: 21)

21. Geno Smith (Last Year: 10)

The guys in this tier all have something in common — they're winners — but whether or not that's pejorative is up to you, the reader.

For most of the guys above this tier, it's easy enough to describe the top traits for a player … his escapability, his creative playmaking, his arm strength or accuracy. The guys in this tier get terms like "winner" or "moxie" or "just finds a way," perhaps because the other traits don't quite apply.

These are guys you can win with — but they're not guys you can win because of.

Look no further than defending Super Bowl champion Sam Darnold.

That's now two good years in a row for Darnold, who's fringe top-10 in metrics like EPA and PFF grade after never ranking higher than 29th in any previous season. And hey — rings are forever.

Darnold greatly improved his sack rate last season but still has an awful 2.9% career interception rate, and he remains horrid under pressure.

The truth is that you can win with but not because of Darnold, but like everyone else in this section, you can absolutely lose because of them.

Maybe Jared Goff has earned his way out of this group by now, but I can't get past the way two elite playcallers in Sean McVay and Ben Johnson still treat the 32-year-old veteran with kid gloves every time he is in the playoffs.

The problem with these guys is that even putting them in the very best ecosystems with blocking, weapons, and playcalling still maxes out as a fringe top-10 QB, which is not without clear value but also has a definite glass ceiling that will almost always be found out in the games that matter most.

Maybe that means Bo Nix should rank highest in this group, because he's the one guy I trust to have enough moxie to make some plays — likely with his feet — and pull a rabbit out of his hat in a big must-have moment.

Nix still feels mostly like a game manager, buoyed by excellent defense, playcalling, and one of the best lines in the league, but that's what we said about Purdy for years and he developed and eventually won me over. Now Nix gets a legit stud weapon in Jaylen Waddle, and at age 26, there's still time to take that next step.

Heck, Nix was an injury away from potentially starting in the Super Bowl, and he also ranked second in the NFL last season in Big Time Throws and third in both number of deep throws and PFF rating on them, so perhaps that answers some of those questions about arm talent too.

If any one of these guys can escape this group and move up a couple tiers, I think it's Nix — maybe this year.

And then there's Geno Smith, who's probably grateful just to be included here at this point.

As terrible as Geno was last year, it's easy to forget that he was among this same group of peers just one year ago — heck, I actually ranked him 10th just last fall, perhaps a bad harbinger for my Purdy No. 10 ranking up from this group this year.

Smith was truly awful last year. He ranked 29th among 30 qualifying quarterbacks in EPA and 27th in Success Rate. He also dropped from a top-3 deep ball grade at PFF to worst in the league, and he's always struggled under pressure and lived in it all last season with the Raiders.

Still, unless Smith is just washed at age 35, he fits this tier to a T.

He's finished .500 or better in four of six years as a starter, and in a good ecosystem, Geno is an underrated guy with fringe top-10 potential and elite accuracy. We just got the bad version last year, where he bottomed out with awful protection and poor playcalling — something that would likely happen to Goff, Darnold, or Nix.

I started with Geno in this tier, then dropped him down to 26th once I saw how ghastly the numbers were last season, but I'm choosing to believe one more time.

Tier VII — No. 1 Pick Wildcards

23. Fernando Mendoza (Last Year: NR)

24. Cam Ward (Last Year: 24)

I'm cheating a bit with Fernando Mendoza since it certainly seems like Kirk Cousins will be the Opening Day starter, but you don't need me to tell you that Cousins is basically the face of the franchise of the previous tier of players at this point of his career.

This feels like about the right spot for Mendoza, a worthy No. 1 pick who will be 22 on Opening Day.

Mendoza is accurate, can make all the throws, and moves the pocket well, though he also took a ton of sacks and saw his eyes drop under more pressure late in the season.

Since 2015, No. 1 pick QBs average just 3.3 wins in their rookie season before leaping to 8.6 victories the following year as sophomores, a whopping 159% leap.

That has to be good news for Cam Ward, who went 3-14 last year in a rough debut.

You're not going to find a Ward metric that doesn't make you shudder. He ranked dead last among starters in both EPA and Success Rate, leading the league with 55 sacks, and his PFF grade ranked 36th, behind every qualified QB except a pair of Browns.

The eye test told a slightly more optimistic story, but the reality might be that last fall was simply a lost season for Ward with no weapons, terrible blocking, and a fired coaching staff.

By last year's results alone, Ward is ranked about 5-to-7 slots too high, so this ranking is generous. This might end up something like a second rookie season, a la Trevor Lawrence after a lost debut year under Urban Meyer.

Tier VIII — We Just Don't Know Yet

24. Tyler Shough (32)

25. Jaxson Dart (Last Year: NR)

26. Malik Willis (Last Year: NR)

For the final 10 quarterbacks in these rankings, we have no idea if they're any good. So at this point, I'd rather take a guy that's definitely a little worse than the names below in hopes of some upside since the veterans we'll get to shortly are almost definitely not doing it for my franchise anyway.

Admittedly, Tyler Shough has already been a heck of a lot better than I ever expected him to be. I ranked Shough last heading into last season, behind the Browns options, and now he looks like a potential long-term starter for the Saints.

The collective media seems ready to anoint Shough and the Saints, and maybe that's what makes me a little extra hesitant.

Yes, Shough has decent metrics around fringe top-20 in most cases, terrific for a second-round rookie, and yes, Shough went 5-4. But those wins came against the Jets, Titans, Panthers (twice), and a fading Bucs team, when New Orleans' season was effectively already over.

Shough has my attention, enough to give him a solid ranking here, but I'm still not seeing much upside and his advanced age and injury history are still real red flags, as is a terrible 25% pressure-to-sack rate.

I just haven't seen enough yet, nor enough that I'm not willing to be wrong on Shough this season until he proves it for more than nine meaningless games.

Jaxson Dart might be lucky to get nine games unless he learns how to take care of himself, after four concussion checks as a rookie.

Dart is a home-run hitter right now. He's good with his legs and scrambles around just long enough to give himself a shot at the big play downfield, but that also means he holds the ball far too long and invites mistakes. As a rookie, 39% of Dart's drawbacks gave him some responsibility for a pressure, double most other QBs.

While his creativity and playmaking are intriguing, Dart needs to eat his vegetables in between like Caleb Williams, and he needs to find a way to stay on the field.

Though it's worth noting that the Giants have just as big a wildcard off the bench in Jameis Winston, who could actually even represent an upgrade in the event that he has to play at some point.

We know very little about Malik Willis as an NFL starter, and I fear we may not learn much this year either.

Willis is 3-3 as a starter in four years, but while everyone is so impressed with his growth under Matt LaFleur, that feels a bit revisionist history from what was really LaFleur simplifying the game plan and eking out wins with the run game.

It feels like Willis might have the most immediate upside of this trio but he definitely has the most downside too, especially as a running QB with virtually no backup or depth behind him.

And unfortunately for Willis, his big shot to start in the NFL comes for a team with little blocking and one of the worst receiving corps you've ever seen in your life.

Good luck, fella.

Tier IX — Unfortunately, We Probably Do Know

27. Bryce Young (Last Year: 29)

28. Daniel Jones (Last Year: 26)

29. Tua Tagovailoa (Last Year: 22)

30. Aaron Rodgers (Last Year: 20)

31. Jacoby Brissett (Last Year: NR)

Bryce Young is a reminder not to confuse improved with good.

Young has absolutely improved from non-NFL quarterback to low-level starter, but he's still that and only that. He got the Panthers back into the playoffs at 8-9 and even looked okay against the Rams. He continues to make slow, steady improvements at sack rate and Success Rate.

The problem is that it's just not enough.

Young looks like the 25th best quarterback in the league, and though we need 32 guys, 25th is just good enough to stop you from getting a good enough draft pick to get a real option.

Daniel Jones certainly looked much better than this tier for half of last season, so maybe you think he at least belongs in the tier with Goff and Darnold, perhaps even higher.

But while the team metrics looked great, Jones was starting to get found out with a 1-4 finish to his season after a 7-1 start that saw his numbers falling drastically with game scripts not as much in his favor, and his 25 Turnover Worthy Plays would've paced to second most in the league.

Jones finished the season 21st in PFF grade, his gaudy early record much more a product of system, coaching, and an elite rushing attack with an awesome line.

But even that stretch was flawed and may not ultimately be real. And we never got a chance to find out, because Jones tore his Achilles, and that's why he's buried in my rankings here.

We saw just how tough an Achilles injury was for both Kirk Cousins and Aaron Rodgers, limiting mobility and their ability to plant and throw.

Maybe Jones is this year's Sam Darnold. If so, he's going to have to prove it.

It looks like Tua Tagovailoa will start the season for Atlanta. I'm not sure he's got any juice left in his arm after being completely exposed in a gimmick offense, on top of being a hit away from retirement at all times.

I'm not all that excited about Michael Penix Jr. either, if we're being honest, especially coming off a torn ACL.

The only real good news is that Atlanta has both guys, so at least they have two bites of the apple. That's better than nothing.

Pittsburgh might just have a rotten apple in Aaron Rodgers.

It feels impossible that we're really running the Rodgers thing back again, now featuring Mike McCarthy too. Rodgers will be 43 in December, and he has not aged gracefully.

Last fall, I ranked Rodgers with the game managers, but he's not even that at this point because he is now allergic to pressure. He has terrible PFF grades under pressure and on passes at 2.5 seconds or longer, and his pressure-to-sack rate has skyrocketed.

It might just be over for Rodgers. Unfortunately, it's still not for the rest of us.

Jacoby Brissett has started at least 11 games in a season four times now — will this be a fifth?

Brissett has a career record of 20-45, a pace of just 5.2 wins. He actually has the best interception rate in league history, a measly 1.4%, but that's the sort of mistake avoidance that makes someone an ideal backup — but not necessarily a starter.

How long until we see Carson Beck?

Tier X — Might as Well Be You or Me at QB

32. Deshaun Watson (Last Year: NR)

Will any quarterback on this roster even be in the NFL in three seasons? I have my doubts.

Shedeur Sanders holds the ball far too long and creates way too many mistakes hunting his deep ball.

Deshaun Watson's last decent season came in empty 2020 stadiums. He went 4-12 that fall … and is winning this depressing QB battle six years later.

It doesn't really matter which quarterback Cleveland trots out there. The Browns season may already be dead on arrival.

Takeaways for Bettors

1.The best quarterbacks in the league still reside in the AFC.

For all the talk about a wide-open AFC this fall, are we sure that's the case?

The AFC has five of the top six QBs in the rankings. Meanwhile, a full half of the conference ranks 20th or worse. That's a pretty huge gap in talent at the most important position.

Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, and Lamar Jackson were all hurt last year, but we dare not forget how the AFC has been QB central. It's still an uphill battle for any team without one of those top stars, in part because any other team will likely have to beat two or three guys just to get out of the conference.

2. The NFC sets up better for a more rounded team to emerge — or a sleeper QB leap!

With almost all of the elite QBs over in the AFC, that might actually leave more parity in the NFC.

The conference has 10 quarterbacks ranked between 5th and 19th, all in my Tier III, IV, or V.

That could leave things more wide open than the conference seems, or it could mean that a dominant defense determines the winner like with Seattle last season.

A big leap from a QB like Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, or Kyler Murray could propel a team like that to the top of the NFC. That might be a bridge too far from someone like Tyler Shough or Jaxson Dart, but perhaps a worst-to-first division leap is in play?

3. Be careful about picking a sleeper from the AFC East or AFC North.

No two divisions have wider QB splits. The AFC East features two top-6 QBs and two bottom-8. The AFC North features two top-4 and two bottom-3.

If you want to back the Jets, Dolphins, Steelers, or Browns to win the division, you're up against it. You need a quarterback to far outperform expectations, and you also need not one but two stud QBs to disappoint. That's a tough sell.

The NFC South might sneakily be worth a mention too.

If I'm right about Baker Mayfield, he's top-12 while the rest of the division is bottom-10. Maybe the Bucs have some value at +190 to win a weak NFC South.

4. On the other hand, the AFC South could be wide open with unpredictable QB play.

Right now, I have the AFC South QBs ranked at 11 (Lawrence), 16 (Stroud), 23 (Ward), and 28 (Jones), but you could really have talked me into about 5-to-7 slots higher or lower for all four of those guys. They were four of the toughest names on the board to rank.

Let's put it another way: is there any order of those four QBs that would genuinely shock you at the end of the season?

The NFC North (5, 14, 17, and 18) has the most compact distribution of QB ranks, but the AFC South QBs feel most unpredictable.

Will one of the AFC South quarterbacks emerge?

5. Who will be this year's Sam Darnold?

Last year, Darnold rose from No. 28 in the ranks to lead his team to a Super Bowl victory. We've also seen Baker Mayfield and Geno Smith rise from the bottom two names three years ago to much greater heights and, at least for awhile, franchise quarterbacks.

So which journeyman quarterback is next?

It feels like Kyler Murray hasn't quite fallen far enough yet — and it really needs to be someone we don't see coming.

Daniel Jones may be the most likely candidate, since we already saw the leap last year before his Achilles injury. Do Tua Tagovailoa or Kirk Cousins have a career renaissance in them? Does Bryce Young have another chapter in his story? Could it be a veteran backup like Jameis Winston or Mitch Trubisky?

Here's a wild one … what if it's Deshaun Watson somehow, all these years later?

Only one way to find out — let's play some football.