Passing Efficiency: Go Figure

University of Washington quarte back Brock Huard and Washington State quarterback Ryan Leaf have been among the nation’s leaders in the NCAA’s passing efficiency ratings all season.

Huard is second with a rating of 168.2, and Leaf fourth at 164.0.

The system was devised in 1979 as a way to judge quarterbacks on something other than completions (which was the yardmark until 1969), or completions per game (which was used from 1970-78). Former UW quarterback Sonny Sixkiller, for instance, is listed as the NCAA’s passing champ for 1970 because he completed the most passes per game, an average of 18.6.

But both of those systems simply favored QBs who played for teams that threw a lot or those who dumped off the ball a lot, and didn’t take into account yards, touchdowns or interceptions.

The NCAA, following the lead of the NFL - which developed a similar but different and vastly more complex system in 1973 - came up with a mathematical formula to judge quarterbacks in 1979 taking into account completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdowns per attempt and interceptions per attempt.

The rating is based on a formula that compares passers with the national averages for 14 seasons prior to 1979.

The 14-year averages that players are compared against are 6.29 yards per attempt, 47.17 percent completions, 3.97 percent touchdowns and 6.54 percent interceptions.

A formula was then devised to give the average quarterback during that 14-year span a rating of 100.

Having 100 as the base average for the rating is the biggest difference between the college and NFL ratings. In the NFL, 100 points is considered exceptional - Steve Young holds the record with a rating of 112.8 in 1994, and only 21 QBs have broken the 100 barrier in the history of the NFL (the league went back and calculated rankings for every quarterback in the league’s history).