Patrick Mahomes has the highest passer rating of all time, both in the regular season and in the playoffs

The official NFL statistic for quantifying passing effectiveness is the passer rating, which takes into account completion percentage, passing yards, touchdowns and interceptions. Passage rating is far from a perfect stat, but at a glance it gives a good look at how effective a quarterback is.

And Patrick Mahomes is the all-time leader of the NFL, both in the regular season and in the playoffs.

To qualify for the regular season record, a quarterback must have thrown 1,500 career passes. Mahomes surpassed that mark in the 2020 season and has now thrown 1,687 assists in his career. He has a career passer rating of 108.7, topping Deshaun Watson’s 104.5, Aaron Rodgers 103.9, Russell Wilson’s 101.7 and Drew Brees 98.7.

It should be noted that everyone in the Top 5 was active during the 2020 NFL season. Quarterbacks are a lot more efficient now than they used to be, and that’s one of the flaws in evaluating passers – it doesn’t fit in the times, so it’s always going to favor passers-by. modern.

But that’s what makes Mahomes break the playoff record so remarkable. Mahomes has a playoff passer rating of 106.6, and when Mahomes hit the minimum 150 playoff assists to qualify, he broke a record Bart Starr had held since the 1960s.

It’s a testament to how good Starr was in big games that he had a 104.8 playoff passer rating, still second to Mahomes in NFL history. The NFL passing offenses were so different in Starr’s day that most passing numbers these days look laughably bad. (In 1969, Starr led the league with a 89.9 passer rating, while in 2020 the average passer rating was 93.6.) In the playoffs, Starr recorded numbers in the 1960s that seem excellent even in 2020.

Mahomes is now putting up numbers the NFL has never seen before.