Was Steve McNair A Good Passer?

Earlier this month, Steve McNair was shot and killed. It was a story that caught everyone by surprise, and there was much said about his contributions to the game, and how he played the game. I thought it might be worthwhile to digress briefly from my current topic - the economics of the NFL Draft to take a look back at McNair's career.

Steve McNair was drafted in 1995 out of little-known Alcorn State. The 3rd overall pick in the draft, he was the 1st quarterback taken that year. The then Houston Oilers (now Tennessee Titans) drafted him ahead of current Titans quarterback Kerry Collins.

He started out his career backing up Chris Chandler in both 1995 and 1996 while the team was still the Houston Oilers. The first year in Tennessee, he took over the starting job. He had a sub-par first year (as most quarterbacks tend to do), and then went on to have a fine career. He is of course, most notably remembered for coming one yard short of leading the Titans to a victory against the St Louis Rams in Superbowl XXXIV. The table and chart below illustrate his career in terms of the standard deviations from the mean CMI.

As you can see, from 1998 until his retirement after the 2007 season, he finished each year at above the mean CMI, with the exceptions of the 2004 and 2007 seasons which were cut short due to injury. His best year was 2003, where he finished 1.40 standard deviations above the mean CMI. His statistics that year: 62.5% completion rate, and a 1.75% interception rate. For his performance on the field that year, he was named Co-NFL MVP along with Peyton Manning. He was traded to the Baltimore Ravens following the 2005 season.

All told, Steve McNair had 9 qualifying years in his 13-year career. Of the 51 quarterbacks since 1940 to throw enough passes to qualify in 9 or more seasons, he ranks 17th. His career average standard deviation from the mean CMI during his 9 years was 0.46, putting him in the company of quarterbacks such as Norm Van Brocklin, John Brodie and Sid Luckman. The chart below illustrates the 51 quarterbacks, and Steve McNair's standing among them.

Best Quarterbacks in History (in terms of current QB Rating Formula)

Here are the Top 50 quarterbacks all-time, based on QB Rating.  I only considered those with at least 1,500 pass attempts (and there were 142 in all over the course of history that had at least 1,500 attempts).  Data is only through the full 2007 season.  I will update this list following the end of the 2008 season.  One can clearly see the bias favoring the modern quarterback.

Here's the next 50.  One needs to look at this list if you wanted to see QB's from yesteryear.

So, it begs the question, does the QB Rating system need to be changed so that fair comparisons can be made over time?  After all, the methodology behind it indexes the statistics to the 1972 season.