NFL Passer Rating Calculator

American football’s four-category passer rating, as the NFL has computed it since 1973 — each of the four capped at 2.375 and floored at nought. The caps are why the maximum is exactly 158.3, and why a quarterback can improve a statistic and not move the rating at all.

Last updated 12 Oct 2026

NFL passer rating, with each component shown

Four capped components

Passing attemptsEvery field on this page comes off a published box score or a team statistics page. Nothing here needs play-by-play, tracking or charting data, which is the line between what this site computes exactly and what it will not guess at.

CompletionsThe defaults are the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s own worked example — Peyton Manning’s 2004 season — so the page opens on a line whose published answer can be checked against it.

Passing yardsGross passing yards, as the box score prints them: sack yardage is not deducted in either rating formula. The adjusted net measures that do deduct it are on the passing rates calculator.

Touchdown passesA touchdown pass is a completion, so this cannot exceed the completions above.

Interceptions thrownAn interception is an incompletion, so this cannot exceed attempts minus completions. The page refuses an impossible line rather than guessing at it.

121.1Example

Peyton Manning, 2004: 336 completions from 497 attempts for 4,557 yards, with 49 touchdown passes and 10 interceptions — the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s own published worked example

Four components, two bounds, and one division by six

a = (completion % minus 30) × 0.05
b = (yards ÷ attempts minus 3) × 0.25
c = touchdown % × 0.2
d = 2.375 minus (interception % × 0.25)
each of a, b, c, d clamped to the range 0 to 2.375
Rating = (a + b + c + d) ÷ 6 × 100

the two bounds, 2.375 and 0: stated by the Pro Football Hall of Fame and, pre-scaled as nought to 475/12, by Dartmouth’s CHANCE teaching aid — two sources agreeing by different routes, since 475/12 is 2.375 × 100 ÷ 6
158.3, and why it is not a round number: four components at 2.375 sum to 9.5, and 9.5 ÷ 6 × 100 is 158.333. Dartmouth gives it as 475/3. Nobody chose it; it is what the bound produces
who set the coefficients, and when: Pete Rozelle asked the league’s statistical committee — the Hall of Fame’s Don Smith, the Elias Sports Bureau’s Seymour Siwoff and the NFL’s Don Weiss — for a better system in 1971. They fitted it to pro passing from 1960 to 1970 so that 1.0 per component was average, and the NFL adopted it in 1973. Nothing in it has moved since, while the passing game has
what it does not contain: rushing, sacks taken, fumbles, who dropped the ball, down, distance, score and time. It is a passing rate statistic and the NFL has never claimed otherwise

Worked example

Peyton Manning, 2004: 336 completions from 497 attempts for 4,557 yards, with 49 touchdown passes and 10 interceptions — the Pro Football Hall of Fame's own published worked example
Completion percentage is 336 ÷ 497 = 67.606%, so a = (67.606 minus 30) × 0.05 = 1.880
Yards per attempt is 4,557 ÷ 497 = 9.169, so b = (9.169 minus 3) × 0.25 = 1.542
Touchdown percentage is 49 ÷ 497 = 9.859%, so c = 9.859 × 0.2 = 1.972
Interception percentage is 10 ÷ 497 = 2.012%, so d = 2.375 minus (2.012 × 0.25) = 1.872
No bound binds. The sum is 7.266, and 7.266 ÷ 6 × 100 = 121.1 — the figure the Hall of Fame prints, with the components agreeing to three decimals
Now the caps. 80 of 100 for 1,000 yards with 12 touchdowns and no interceptions: a = 2.5 and c = 2.4, both capped to 2.375, rating 147.9. Complete ten more of the same hundred and a would be 3.0, still capped: 147.9 again. The table below walks both bounds, row by row

The four components and their bounds

Coefficients and both bounds read from the Pro Football Hall of Fame and corroborated against Dartmouth’s CHANCE teaching aid, which prints the identical formula with the division by six folded in and the truncation as nought to 475/12. The four threshold columns are this page’s own arithmetic from those coefficients, each checked against the live engine on both sides.
Component	Scored as	Caps at 2.375 when	Floors at nought when
Completion percentage	(completion % minus 30) × 0.05	completion % reaches 77.5	completion % is 30 or less
Yards per attempt	(yards ÷ attempts minus 3) × 0.25	yards per attempt reaches 12.5	yards per attempt is 3 or less
Touchdown percentage	touchdown % × 0.2	touchdown % reaches 11.875	no touchdown is thrown
Interception percentage	2.375 minus interception % × 0.25	no interception is thrown	interception % reaches 9.5
The four together	sum, ÷ 6, × 100	all four capped: exactly 158.3	all four floored: exactly 0.0

A quarterback improves and the rating does not move

Every rating here was computed by the engine that runs the calculator above. The middle rows are why the caps matter: between 78 and 90 completions in a hundred attempts the rating is frozen, because the completion component has stopped reading the statistic. No stats page tells a reader that, which is why the component values are printed above.
Line, all on 100 attempts	What the components do	Rating
77 completions, 1,000 yards, 12 TD, 0 INT	completion component 2.350, just below the cap	147.5
78 completions, same otherwise	2.375, exactly at the cap	147.9
80 completions, same otherwise	would be 2.500, held at 2.375	147.9
90 completions, same otherwise	would be 3.000, still held at 2.375	147.9, unmoved by twelve more completions
30 completions, 300 yards, 0 TD, 10 INT	all four on the nought floor	0.0
30 completions, 300 yards, 0 TD, 14 INT	four more interceptions, all four still floored	0.0, unmoved
80 completions, 1,300 yards, 12 TD, 0 INT	all four at the cap	158.3, the maximum

What the caps do, and why 158.3 is the number it is

Passer rating is American football’s oldest composite statistic and the one most often quoted without anybody knowing what it is. It takes four rates from a passing line — the share of attempts completed, the yards per attempt, the share that were touchdowns and the share intercepted — scores each on its own scale, adds them, divides by six and multiplies by a hundred. Nothing is hidden, which already makes it a different kind of object from ESPN’s Total QBR, whose model is not published.

The coefficients belong to a committee and a decade. Pete Rozelle asked the league’s statistical committee for a better system in 1971; Don Smith of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Seymour Siwoff of the Elias Sports Bureau and the NFL’s Don Weiss fitted one to professional passing between 1960 and 1970, setting the scales so that 1.0 per component was that period’s average, and the NFL adopted it in 1973. Nothing in it has moved since; the passing game has moved a great deal, so the upward drift in ratings decade by decade is in the sport rather than the arithmetic.

Each component is capped at 2.375 and floored at nought, and that is the part nobody explains. The Hall of Fame states the cap in its own words — “If the results are greater than 2.375 (Comp. Pct. greater than 77.5), award 2.375” — and the floor likewise. Four components at 2.375 sum to 9.5, and 9.5 divided by six and multiplied by a hundred is 158.333, which is where the famous 158.3 comes from. Nobody chose it. The minimum is exactly nought for the same reason from the other end.

Three consequences follow. A perfect rating does not require a perfect game: 80 of 100 for 1,300 yards with twelve touchdowns and no interceptions reaches 158.3 with twenty incompletions in it. A quarterback can improve a statistic and not move the rating: on a hundred attempts for a thousand yards with twelve touchdowns, 78 completions and 90 both give 147.9. And the floor hides bad play as the cap hides good: ten interceptions in a hundred attempts and fourteen both give 0.0. So the page prints all four component scores and counts how many are pinned, because the rating alone cannot say whether it is still listening to the statistic you changed. Over a season the caps rarely bind — none binds on the Manning example — which is why so few people know they exist. Over a single game they bind constantly.

There are two passer ratings and they are not two estimates of one thing. The National Football League’s four-category system, adopted in 1973, caps each component and so stops at 158.3. The NCAA’s passing efficiency rating caps nothing, weights a yard per attempt about twice as heavily and an interception about half as heavily, and has no practical ceiling. This page computes one as its headline and prints the other for the same line beside it, so the gap is visible on whatever you enter. On the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s own worked example — Peyton Manning’s 2004, 336 of 497 for 4,557 yards with 49 touchdowns and 10 interceptions — the NFL formula gives 121.1 and the NCAA formula 173.1, a gap of 52.0 on one identical line. A college rating above 158.3 is therefore ordinary.

What the rating leaves out is no secret either: rushing, sacks, fumbles, down, distance, score, time, and who dropped a pass or ran twenty yards after catching one. The rates underneath it are on the passing rates calculator, and what a touchdown is worth in the first place is on the scoring and two-point interpreter.

Every figure here is arithmetic on counts a league or a statistics provider publishes. This page produces no commercial prediction of any kind, and no page in this section does.

Frequently asked questions

What is the NFL passer rating formula?

Four components, each clamped between nought and 2.375: (completion percentage minus 30) times 0.05; (yards per attempt minus 3) times 0.25; touchdown percentage times 0.2; and 2.375 minus interception percentage times 0.25. Add the four, divide by six, multiply by a hundred. On Peyton Manning’s 2004 season that gives 121.1, which is the figure the Pro Football Hall of Fame publishes.

Why is the maximum passer rating 158.3?

Because each of the four components is capped at 2.375. Four of those sum to 9.5, and 9.5 divided by six multiplied by a hundred is 158.333, published as 158.3. The number was not chosen — it is what the cap produces. The minimum is exactly nought for the same reason.

Can a quarterback have a perfect passer rating without a perfect game?

Yes, and it is the most useful thing to know about the statistic. Eighty completions from a hundred attempts for 1,300 yards with twelve touchdowns and no interceptions gives exactly 158.3, with twenty incompletions in the line. A perfect rating means every component has reached its cap, not that nothing went wrong.

Why did my passer rating not change when the quarterback completed more passes?

Because the completion component was already at its cap. Above 77.5 per cent completions it is held at 2.375 and further completions are invisible to the rating: on a hundred attempts for a thousand yards with twelve touchdowns, 78 and 90 completions both rate 147.9. The calculator counts pinned components for exactly this reason.

Is the college passer rating the same formula?

No, and the two are not comparable. The NCAA’s passing efficiency rating has no caps, weights a yard per attempt about twice as heavily and an interception about half as heavily, and has no practical maximum. On Manning’s 2004 line the NFL formula gives 121.1 and the NCAA formula 173.1. Pro-Football-Reference says simply that “pro and college football use different formulas”.

Related calculators

References

Pro Football Hall of Fame. NFL’s Passer Rating — the four-category system in full: completion percentage scored as “(Comp. Pct. − 30) × .05”, with “If the results are greater than 2.375 (Comp. Pct. greater than 77.5), award 2.375”; yards per attempt as (yards ÷ attempts − 3) × .25; touchdown percentage × .2; and interception percentage as 2.375 − (Int. Pct. × .25), floored at nought past 9.5 per cent. “The sum is then divided by six … and multiplied by 100.” The scale runs from “.000” to “158.3 being the highest rating a passer can achieve.” It works a published example: Peyton Manning’s 2004, 336 of 497 for 4,557 yards, 49 touchdowns and 10 interceptions, rated 121.1. profootballhof.com (read 15 Oct 2026).
CHANCE teaching aid (Dartmouth College). NFL rating data — the same formula with the ÷ 6 and × 100 folded in: “[5(%Completions − 30)/6] + [10(%TDs)/3] + [25(19 − 2(%Int))/12] + [25(Yards/Attempt − 3)/6]”, where “each item in [ ] is to be truncated to be no smaller than 0 and no larger than 475/12 (giving a maximal rating of 475/3 or 158.3)”, rounded “to the nearest tenth”. Its no-truncation form, “Rating = [25 + 10(%Completions) + 40*(%TD) − 50(%INT) + 50(YD/ATT)]/12”, is where this site’s per-unit NFL weights come from. It cites the NFL’s 1977 National Football League Passer Rating System, “36 pages, 25 of them look-up tables”. chance.dartmouth.edu (read 15 Oct 2026).
Wikipedia. Passer rating — cited for history and bounds, NOT for either formula: both are images and did not arrive in the fetched text. “Each of those variables is scaled to a value between 0 and 2.375, with 1.0 being statistically average”; “If the result of any calculation is greater than 2.375, it is set to 2.375”; range 0 to 158.3. Pete Rozelle asked the league’s statistical committee — the Hall of Fame’s Don Smith, Elias Sports Bureau’s Seymour Siwoff and the NFL’s Don Weiss — for a better system in 1971; they fitted it to 1960-1970 pro passing and the NFL adopted it in 1973. The college formula “does not impose limits on the four components”, was fitted to 1965-1978 college data, and has a theoretical maximum of 1,261.6 and minimum of −731.6 (read 15 Oct 2026).
Pro-Football-Reference. Glossary — “Note that pro and college football use different formulas” for passer rating, and it prints neither. Adjusted yards per attempt is “(pass yards + 20*(pass TD) − 45*(interceptions thrown))/(passing attempts)”, with the note “that we are now using 20 yards per TD instead of 10”; adjusted net yards per attempt is “(pass yards + 20*(pass TD) − 45*(interceptions thrown) − sack yards)/(passing attempts + sacks)”. Team-level yards per attempt “uses gross passing yardage”. pro-football-reference.com (read 15 Oct 2026).