At the end of the Lions’ victory over the Seahawks on Monday night, Troy Aikman reflected on ESPN about how the NFL’s official passer rating system could give Jared Goff a rating that isn’t “perfect” despite his performance. This is due to the touchdown pass Goff caught but didn’t throw.
As a team, the Lions completed all 19 of their passes for 273 yards, scoring three touchdowns with no interceptions. This results in a perfect passer rating of 158.3.
However, this rating includes the touchdown pass that Amon-Ra St. Brown threw to Goff during a trick play. Individually, Goff completed 18 of 18 passes for 292 yards, with two touchdowns and no interceptions.
This means he threw a touchdown on 11.1 percent of his passes, which is just below what is needed for a “perfect” passer rating.
To achieve a perfect passer rating, a player must throw at least 11.875 percent of their passes for touchdowns, have no interceptions, achieve a completion percentage of 77.5 percent, and average at least 12.5 yards per attempt.
Goff met three of these four criteria but fell just short on the touchdown percentage, giving him a passer rating of 155.8. If the Lions had called a play for Goff to throw a touchdown instead of catching one, he would have finished with a perfect rating of 158.3.
The passer rating has been the NFL’s official way of ranking quarterbacks for over fifty years, and there are no signs it will change.
It’s not the best method for ranking quarterbacks, partly because of the arbitrary thresholds, like needing an 11.875 touchdown percentage to be “perfect.” But since this is what the NFL uses, it garners a lot of attention from fans and the media.
The Lions are the 57th team in NFL history to finish a game with a perfect passer rating of 158.3 and the second team to do it this year, following the Cardinals in Week Two.
It was a memorable night for Goff, even if the passer rating system indicates he didn’t quite achieve perfection.
