The penultimate week of the season was an odd one from a statistical standpoint. QBR and PFF mostly agreed (for once), but some of the boxscores straight up lied to us about how well quarterbacks played. We saw 45 touchdown passes and 32 QB turnovers, and that’s standard fare for a late season week in today’s NFL. However, according to PFF graders, quarterbacks registered 36 big time throws and a whopping 55 turnover worthy plays!

Let’s look at the week 17 rankings then take a closer look at some of these misleading statlines:

Joe Burrow posted a league leading 11.5 ANY/A in Cincinnati’s big win over the Chiefs on Sunday, but he placed outside the top five in both PFF and QBR. That’s because this game was a masterpiece from rookie WR Ja’Marr Chase and Burrow was kind of along for the ride. In the first quarter, Chase turned a 10 yard pass into a 72 yard touchdown with a couple of ankle breaking moves in the open field. Later, he ran an intermediate completion 69 yards to the house after Daniel Sorensen took one of the worst angles you’ll ever see from a player in coverage. All told, 58% of Burrow’s yardage came after the catch, he took four sacks for 34 yards, and just 27% of his dropbacks resulted in a first down.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Josh Allen ranked 11th in both QBR and PFF grade despite a ghastly -0.58 ANY/A and 17.0 passer rating. In fact, that passer rating was the lowest for a winning QB since the 2010 Todd Collins vs. Jimmy Clausen trainwreck! But Allen did a ton of damage with his legs as he earned the highest rushing grade of the week in both metrics. This is where I normally make a wisecrack about QBR putting too much weight on rushing, but PFF concurred so I think it’s legitimate. Moreover, two of his three picks came on tipped passes and his receivers generated a pathetic 2.7 YAC per catch. Buffalo scoring 29 points on only seven real drives justifies Allen’s good marks in the advanced metrics.

In Dallas’ loss to Arizona, Dak Prescott tossed three TD passes with no picks and a 105.8 passer rating. However, PFF credits him zero big time throws and a pair of turnover worthy plays.

Drew Lock posted a shiny 9.8 ANY/A and 116.1 passer rating in Denver’s blowout loss to the Chargers. But that clean statline yielded the 16th best PFF grade and 28th highest QBR of the week. Lock completed a couple of deep passes but was otherwise pretty ineffective. He was also terrible on late downs, as Denver converted just 4 of 15 third and fourth down opportunities.

With Jimmy Garoppolo sidelined with yet another injury, the 49ers turned to rookie Trey Lance this week. His stats were very good – 9.83 ANY/A and 116.0 passer rating – but PFF and QBR both thought his performance was well below average. Lance’s rushing was poor with none of his eight attempts yielding more than six yards. PFF assigned him two turnover worthy plays despite only one interception, and his two 40+ yard completions were both heavily aided by nifty moves from the receiver (that’s typical for the Niners offense regardless of who plays quarterback).

Andy Dalton, Tua Tagovailoa, Taylor Heinicke, Ben Roethlisberger, Davis Mills, and Sam Darnold each got away with the same number of terrible plays; these guys all threw one actual pick but were nailed for three turnover worthy plays by PFF. Matt Ryan did them one better with no INT’s but three turnover worthy plays.

Sometime after week 18 I’m going to compare full season TD/INT ratios to BTT/TWP ratios; I think the vast differences between the two methods will surprise a lot of people!

Here are the season rankings with one week to go:

What are your thoughts?