The Arizona Cardinals have a quarterback problem. It’s not that Jacoby Brissett has outplayed Kyler Murray this season; that tends to happen in small sample sizes because Brissett is a certain kind of competent that shines until crunch time. It’s that Murray is tied to the franchise through 2026.
That means he’ll likely outlast an underwhelming coaching staff that has Arizona, once again, too bad to be a real playoff threat and too good to earn a top draft slot to kick off a rebuild. The Cardinals win in Dallas Monday night kept them on the outskirts of the playoff race, but a brutal schedule remains. Eight of their final nine games are against teams with .500 records or better. Considering the only team with a winning record Arizona has beaten this fall is the Carolina Panthers, that’s a daunting task.
They’ll need elite quarterback play to push to the postseason and cool head coach Jonathan Gannon’s seat. It’s unlikely they’ll get it. Murray clocks in at 20th in this week’s advanced stat quarterback ranks. Brissett is 12th but untrustworthy; limit these ranks to fourth quarter performance and he drops all the way to 29th.
Thus, you’ve got a team stuck in limbo for at least another year barring a stunning turnaround from the quarterback it gave $230 million in 2022. Gannon says Murray is still his guy. The Cardinals say, at least reportedly, ehhhhhh maybe not. Gannon’s receivers say Brissett brings the communication they need to rise up. The conflict is minor, but meaningful. Ultimately, it could mean more years in limbo for the Cardinals.
Anyway, let’s check on the quarterbacks outside the Phoenix metropolitan area.
The data is limited — but it does give us a pretty good idea of who has risen to the occasion this fall. Let’s see which quarterbacks are great and who truly stinks through eight-plus games. These numbers are from the NFL’s Next Gen Stats model but compiled by the extremely useful RBSDM.com, run by The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin and Sebastian Carl.
Using expected points added (EPA, the value a quarterback adds on any given play compared to the average NFL result) along with completion percentage over expected (CPOE, the percent of his passes that are caught that aren’t expected to be in typical NFL situations) gives us a graph of 35 quarterbacks (minimum 144 plays) that looks like this:
Break that into tiers using RBSDM.com’s outstanding and helpful plotting software, and it looks like this:
Let’s take a look at this week’s rankings and figure out where the numbers are right and where they’re wrong.
Tier I: Savior Sam and the boys
1. Sam Darnold, Seattle Seahawks: 0.237 EPA+CPOE composite
2. Drake Maye, New England Patriots: 0.22
3. Jordan Love, Green Bay Packers: 0.216
4. Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens: 0.216
Darnold didn’t throw an incompletion on Sunday night until the second half. He’d already thrown four touchdown passes by then. And none were to Jaxon Smith-Njigba. The NFC West race is going to be so, so much fun this winter.
Tier II: Where Daniel Jones landed (among the still-elite)
5. Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills: 0.169 EPA+CPOE composite
6. Daniel Jones, Indianapolis Colts: 0.168
7. Jared Goff, Detroit Lions: 0.162
8. Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs: 0.161
9. Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia Eagles: 0.16
Jones was in the running for the top spot after eight weeks. Welp, that’s what a five-turnover day will do to you. Mahomes slid a bit as well as the Bills followed the blueprint to stopping him down to the minutiae. They created pressure with four-man fronts, crowded the secondary (thanks to the best game of Cole Bishop’s career) and forced him into, statistically, the second-worst game of his career.
Also, they hit Travis Kelce very, very hard.
Tier III: Still very, very good
10. Matthew Stafford, Los Angeles Rams: 0.147 EPA+CPOE composite
11. Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys: 0.146
12. Jacoby Brissett, Arizona Cardinals: 0.13
13. Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers: 0.12
14. Aaron Rodgers, Pittsburgh Steelers: 0.113
Again, Brissett’s rank drops to 29th when you limit the data to *only* fourth quarter snaps. He is a perfect backup quarterback who will not lead you to comeback glory and might cough up a lead in the process.
Tier IV: Concerns linger, and how do the stats have Baker Mayfield so wrong?
15. C.J. Stroud, Houston Texans: 0.105 EPA+CPOE composite
16. Mac Jones, San Francisco 49ers: 0.102
17. Jaxson Dart, New York Giants: 0.101
18. Baker Mayfield, Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 0.091
19. Carson Wentz, Minnesota Vikings: 0.078
20. Kyler Murray, Arizona Cardinals: 0.075
21. Bo Nix, Denver Broncos: 0.071
22. Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders: 0.067
This is a rough tier for injured quarterbacks. Wentz did enough to keep his name among the useful backups in next year’s free agent marketplace. Daniels had struggled to live up to his 2024 standard and then dislocated his elbow on a rollout late in a 38-7 game. Jones hasn’t been better than the best we’ve seen from Brock Purdy as a 49er, but he’s done well enough to stir months of debate regarding Purdy’s $265 million contract.
Then there’s Mayfield, who has thrived despite injuries to nearly all his most important skill players and has Tampa Bay in line for a fifth-straight NFC South title. Like I’ve said before, advanced stats has no metric for being an absolute lunatic who parlays his specific case of football insanity into wins.
Tier V: Can the young QBs here make their escape?
23. Spencer Rattler, New Orleans Saints: 0.06 EPA+CPOE composite
24. Caleb Williams, Chicago Bears: 0.059
25. Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins: 0.057
26. Michael Penix Jr., Atlanta Falcons: 0.056
27. Geno Smith, Las Vegas Raiders: 0.048
28. Bryce Young, Carolina Panthers: 0.042
29. Russell Wilson, New York Giants: 0.04
30. Joe Flacco, Cincinnati Bengals: 0.04
31. Justin Fields, New York Giants: 0.039
Rattler wasn’t especially efficient but he was fun to watch. Tyler Shough’s composite through the first two games of his NFL career is a disquieting -0.031, which would be three times worse than this year’s worst qualified starting quarterback. New Orleans has to do its due diligence on a rookie second round quarterback, but so far Rattler looks like the better option moving forward (as a backup to whichever QB the team selects near the top of the 2026 NFL Draft).
Williams and Flacco both thrived in Week 9, in large part because they were playing each other’s defenses. Young threw one of the worst interceptions you’ll see this fall, but was bailed out because the Green Bay Packers are Schrodinger’s Team.
Tier VI: Jakobi Meyers can fix him!
32. Jake Browning, Cincinnati Bengals: 0.028 EPA+CPOE composite
33. Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville Jaguars: 0.026
In his last six games, Lawrence has thrown multiple touchdown passes just once. He has four rushing touchdowns in that span, but those are largely the result of happy accidents in an offense that’s set him up with designed runs only five times in Liam Coen’s first season as head coach. His -5.0 CPOE is third-worst in the NFL, ahead of only the last two guys on this list. If the Jaguars are going to make any noise in the playoffs, they need Lawrence to somehow warp back to his 2022 form.
Tier VII: Active detriments to their offense (in part because they have no help)
34. Cam Ward, Tennessee Titans: -0.006 EPA+CPOE composite
35. Dillon Gabriel, Cleveland Browns: -0.01
Ward had one of his better games of 2025. He still contributed -3.7 EPA on a day the Titans scored two touchdowns… and neither came from the offense. Oooof.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: NFL QB ranks Week 10: Settling the Cardinals quarterback conundrum
