New York Giants: Is Eli Manning Worthy Of The Hall of Fame?
2. Career Passer Rating: 83.7
Passer rating is calculated using a quarterback’s passing attempts, completions, yards, touchdowns, and interceptions. It is the official measurement used by the NFL to determine passing leaders and scales from 0.0 to 158.3.
If you want to read more about it, you can see NFL.com’s full definition of the statistic. It’s essentially an accurate measure of a quarterback’s overall skill level.
83.7 is good, but not great. The number puts Eli Manning at 40th all time and 23rd among active players, and he sits below some of the worst active QBs in the league: Carson Palmer, Colin Kaepernick, Jay Cutler, Matt Schaub, and Sam Bradford.
However, he’s also above several Hall of Famers, including Bart Starr, Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman, and Brett Favre.
How is this even possible? I sat here for about ten minutes trying to figure it out. I came to the solution that it is because we are living in a pass-friendly league right now.
Quarterbacks today have more completions and touchdowns than their older counterparts, so it’s hard to compare across generations.
The solution? Let’s only compare Manning to quarterbacks of his generation. I say this while visibly cringing, because I know this is an unflattering statistic for Manning. As stated above, he’s 23rd among active quarterbacks.
If someone were to tell me that a player has a lower passer rating than Palmer, Kaepernick, and Cutler, I would probably bust out laughing and say “Jesus, what kind of mediocre quarterback are we talking about?” There is no way that these players are going to make it into the Hall of Fame.
They are objectively inconsistent quarterbacks.
Can we say the same about Manning? Even though he has a lower Passer Rating, does he deserve to be in the HOF? Again, I think were gonna have to give this category another check in the, “No,” column.