Game quality
How well each team played, beyond the score: EPA (expected points added) per play, adjusted for the opponent. A big day against a bad defence counts for less. Season views include playoff games.
Quarterbacks, 2026
Dropback-weighted season totals. Click a column to sort, a name for the game log. Adj EPA/dropback is the number to compare players on; schedule shows how much of the gap from raw is opponents.
| Quarterback | Team | Games | Dropbacks | Adj EPA/db | Raw EPA/db | Schedule | Total adj EPA | INT / FL | Turnover EPA | Sacks | Sack EPA | WPA | CPOE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dak Prescott | DAL | 8 | 316 | +0.160 | +0.165 | -0.005 | +50.6 | 5 / 0 | -19.5 | 11 | -16.1 | +1.20 | +0.3 |
| Jordan Love | GB | 8 | 327 | +0.138 | +0.141 | -0.004 | +45.0 | 6 / 1 | -29.1 | 14 | -20.0 | +0.79 | -1.2 |
| Matthew Stafford | LA | 8 | 314 | +0.102 | +0.093 | +0.009 | +32.0 | 8 / 0 | -34.8 | 12 | -19.4 | +0.87 | +0.6 |
| Jacoby Brissett | ARI | 8 | 322 | -0.060 | -0.072 | +0.011 | -19.4 | 7 / 0 | -30.0 | 19 | -32.8 | -0.42 | -0.6 |
| Aaron Rodgers | PIT | 8 | 308 | -0.073 | -0.095 | +0.023 | -22.3 | 6 / 1 | -26.6 | 23 | -45.7 | -0.57 | -1.9 |
How the ratings are built
Opponent adjustment. A unit's rating for a game is its average over its other games that season, blended with 16 games' worth of prior (league average plus half of last season's gap from it; 24 games for pass defence, which is noisier). Early in a season that leans on last year; by midseason it is mostly this year. Chosen by how well it predicts a held-out game: it cut that error by about a quarter against no shrinkage, and adjusted numbers agree between odd and even weeks more than raw ones do (team EPA margin r 0.52 → 0.55, defence 0.32 → 0.36, QB EPA/dropback 0.47 → 0.49, 2016–2025).Win expectancy is a logistic fit of wins on EPA margin over 6,036 completed games (it names the winner 86.5% of the time). These describe what happened; one game is not a forecast. Play-by-play credits the quarterback with every sack and dropback, so a bad line shows up in his numbers. Seasons 2016–2026, built 2026-11-07 11:05 UTC, from nflverse. Write-up:
backtests/nfl_game_quality/FINDINGS.md.