NFL QB rankings after week 1, where does Tua Tagovailoa land?
By Juan Vasquez
Week 1 of the NFL season is officially behind us, and we are ranking the performances of all 32 starting QBs. Where does Tua Tagovailoa land?
Playoff spots and Superbowl contenders aren’t decided in week 1, but it’s our first measuring stick for the 2022 season. How many teams will win because of their QB? How many teams will win with their QB? And how many teams will struggle to win because of their QB?
Football is a team sport, but in recent years teams have become more dependent on their QBs than ever before.
To put it into perspective, just last year the team with the best QB in the division ended up winning that division!
QBs of teams that won the division in 2021:
AFC North: Joe Burrow
AFC East: Josh Allen
AFC West: Patrick Mahomes
AFC South: Ryan Tannehill
Lamar Jackson was hurt and went out ugly so Burrow passed him (for the year), and seeing Ryan Tannehill be the best is misleading since the AFC South is a dumpster fire. But the NFC played out similarly:
NFC North: Aaron Rodgers
NFC East: Dak Prescott
NFC West: Matthew Stafford
NFC South: Tom Brady
Russell Wilson was hurt and went out ugly, the rest is pretty self-explanatory. 2020 did not have a 100% hit rate for the formula of “Team with best QB in the division = winner of the division” but it came up close.
Once the playoffs start things change drastically. At that point, every team that has a top 10 QB has a great chance of winning the Superbowl. That’s when “this is a team game” holds the most weight because you’re splitting hairs under a microscope.
So let’s see which QBs are going to be the reason a team wins the division, and which QBs are going to be the reason they lose it.