Tweaking the NFL's Quarterback Passer Rating for Better Results

In recent years, the NFLs quarterback passer rating has become one of the most widely recognized statistics in sports. Though it has been in use since 1973, popular acceptance of the statistic took a few decades and has resulted in a great deal of debate over its ability to effectively quantify an aspect of the quarterbacks performance. Here, we will offer some background on the current quarterback passer rating system, consider some prevalent criticisms of the rating and propose some minor modifications to the rating system designed to keep the original intent of the statistic intact, while significantly improving results. Thus, rather than to offer a newly designed statistic, the goal here is to offer the simplest of modifications to the current quarterback passer rating, in line with the established calculation procedure, which will improve the effectiveness of the statistic. We will show that these modifications produce results that are far more reasonable than those achieved by the current rating.