Yards Per Attempt and Passing Rates Calculator
Yards Per Attempt and Passing Rates Calculator
The American football passing rates a box score supports exactly — yards per attempt, adjusted yards per attempt, completion percentage, touchdown and interception percentage, and yards per completion. The adjusted weights are a statistical convention rather than a rule, and one of them has been changed.
Adjusted yards per attempt, with every rate beside it
Totals in, rates out200 completions from 300 attempts for 2,700 yards, with 25 touchdown passes and 8 interceptions
Five definitional rates and one convention
Completion % = completions ÷ attempts × 100
Touchdown % = touchdown passes ÷ attempts × 100
Interception % = interceptions ÷ attempts × 100
Adjusted yards per attempt = (yards + 20 × touchdowns − 45 × interceptions) ÷ attempts
- yards per attempt, and the one thing to watch
- Pro-Football-Reference defines it as yards over attempts, and notes that at team level the numerator is GROSS passing yardage — sacks are not deducted. Both passer-rating formulas use the gross figure too, so this page does the same and says so
- 20 yards for a touchdown, and it used to be 10
- Pro-Football-Reference prints the adjusted formula with the explicit note “that we are now using 20 yards per TD instead of 10”. Sports-Reference’s college glossary gives the same 20 and −45. A weight that has been changed once is a convention, not a measurement, and the older value is computed above alongside the current one
- 45 yards for an interception
- the same two glossaries, unchanged between them. It is far heavier than the touchdown credit, which is the point: the adjusted measure exists to price a turnover properly against the yards it cost
- adjusted NET yards per attempt, which this page cannot compute
- Pro-Football-Reference’s version deducts sack yardage from the numerator and adds sacks to the denominator: “(pass yards + 20*(pass TD) – 45*(interceptions thrown) – sack yards)/(passing attempts + sacks)”. It needs two counts this page does not take, so it is named here rather than approximated
Worked example
200 completions from 300 attempts for 2,700 yards, with 25 touchdown passes and 8 interceptions
Yards per attempt is 2,700 ÷ 300 = 9.00
Adjusted: 2,700 + 20 × 25 − 45 × 8 = 2,840, and 2,840 ÷ 300 = 9.47
At the older 10-yard touchdown weight the same line gives 8.63, which is 0.83 yards per attempt lower. The change from 10 to 20 is not cosmetic
The percentages: 200 ÷ 300 = 66.7% completions, 25 ÷ 300 = 8.33% touchdowns, 8 ÷ 300 = 2.67% interceptions, and 2,700 ÷ 200 = 13.50 yards per completion
Every one of these is a rate, and the page proves it. Double every count — 400 of 600 for 5,400 with 50 touchdowns and 16 interceptions — and all six figures are identical. Halve the attempts alone, to 150, and yards per attempt doubles to 18.00
And the direction of each weight is separate. One more touchdown adds 20 ÷ 300 = 0.07 to the adjusted figure; one more interception subtracts 45 ÷ 300 = 0.15, which is more than twice as much. Transposing the two weights would reverse both movements and leave the headline looking perfectly plausible
What is definitional here and what is a convention
| Rate | Formula | Who defines it | Can two sources disagree? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Completion percentage | completions ÷ attempts | arithmetic; the counts are on the box score | no |
| Yards per attempt | yards ÷ attempts | arithmetic, on GROSS yards | only on whether sacks are netted out, which this page does not do |
| Touchdown and interception percentage | the count ÷ attempts | arithmetic | no |
| Yards per completion | yards ÷ completions | arithmetic; undefined with no completions | no |
| Adjusted yards per attempt | (yards + 20 × TD − 45 × INT) ÷ attempts | Pro-Football-Reference and Sports-Reference, as a house convention | yes — the touchdown weight was 10 before it was 20 |
| Adjusted NET yards per attempt | the above, minus sack yards, over attempts plus sacks | Pro-Football-Reference | not computed here: it needs sack counts this page does not take |
What the 10-to-20 change does to one season
| Touchdown weight | Adjusted yards per attempt | Difference from yards per attempt |
|---|---|---|
| none — plain yards per attempt | 9.00 | — |
| 10 yards per touchdown, the older convention | 8.63 | 0.37 lower |
| 20 yards per touchdown, the current convention | 9.47 | 0.47 higher |
The rates a box score supports, and the one it does not
Before any composite rating, American football’s passing game reduces to a handful of rates, and most of them are not open to argument. Yards per attempt is yards divided by attempts. Completion percentage is completions divided by attempts. Touchdown and interception percentage are the same operation on two more counts. All four come off a published box score and there is no convention to disagree with and no governing body that needs to define them.
Yards per attempt is the one that does the work. It is the rate both passer-rating formulas weight most heavily, and the one where they disagree most: the NCAA’s passing efficiency rating prices a yard per attempt at 8.4 against the NFL passer rating‘s effective 4.167 on its own scale. One rate, priced at double, is most of why the two ratings diverge by fifty points on an ordinary season.
One wrinkle in the numerator, stated because it is easy to get wrong. These are gross passing yards. Yardage lost to sacks is not deducted and sacks are not counted as attempts, in this page or in either rating formula — Pro-Football-Reference says plainly that its team-level yards-per-attempt uses gross passing yardage. The measure that does net sacks out is adjusted net yards per attempt, and it needs a sack count and a sack-yardage count this page does not take, so it is named here and not approximated.
Adjusted yards per attempt is a different kind of number, and the page keeps the two kinds apart. It credits a touchdown pass with 20 yards and charges an interception 45, then divides by attempts as before. Those two weights are not arithmetic and not a rule: they are a convention adopted by the statistical sites, Pro-Football-Reference and Sports-Reference give the same pair, and Pro-Football-Reference’s own glossary records that the touchdown credit used to be 10 rather than 20 — “Note that we are now using 20 yards per TD instead of 10”. A weight that has been changed once can be changed again, so this page computes the measure at both weights and prints both. On its default season the two differ by 0.83 yards per attempt, which is more than the gap between an average passing season and a good one.
The relative size of the two weights is worth noticing on its own account. An interception costs 45 and a touchdown earns 20, so the convention treats throwing it to the other team as more than twice as consequential as throwing it for a score — which is a defensible position about football, and is also a position, taken by a statistics publisher rather than by a rules committee. Nothing on this page can tell you whether it is right.
What none of these rates knows about is down, distance, score, time or who else was on the field: a twelve-yard completion on third and fifteen counts exactly as much as one on third and three. The statistic built to price those things is ESPN’s Total QBR, and it needs play-by-play data a box score does not carry, which is why that page explains it instead of computing it. The team-level version of the down-and-distance question that a box score can answer is the third down and red zone conversion calculator.
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 a good yards per attempt in American football?
This page does not print a threshold, because a good figure depends on the code, the era and the level, and no governing body publishes one. What it will say is that both passer rating formulas treat 3.0 yards per attempt as the point below which the component scores nothing at all, and the NFL formula stops rewarding the rate entirely at 12.5.
What is adjusted yards per attempt?
Passing yards plus 20 for every touchdown pass minus 45 for every interception, all divided by attempts. The two weights are a convention of the statistical sites rather than a rule, and Pro-Football-Reference records that the touchdown weight used to be 10. This page computes it at both weights so the difference is visible.
Do these figures deduct sack yardage?
No. They are gross passing yards, and sacks are not counted as attempts, which is what both passer-rating formulas also do. The measure that nets sacks out is adjusted net yards per attempt, and it needs a sack count and a sack-yardage count that this page does not ask for, so it is not computed here.
Why does the page refuse when I enter more completions than attempts?
Because the line is impossible and a percentage above a hundred would be worse than no answer. The same applies to more touchdown passes than completions — a touchdown pass is a completion — and to more interceptions than incompletions. The page withholds every rate rather than printing one it cannot stand behind.
Why is yards per completion blank sometimes?
Because with no completions the quantity does not exist, and nought would be a false answer rather than a missing one. Every figure on this page that divides by a count is withheld when that count is nought, rather than being shown as zero.
Related calculators
References
- 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).
- Sports-Reference. College Football Stats Glossary — “Passing Efficiency Rating; statistic used by the NCAA to evaluate passing efficiency. The formula is (8.4 * Yds + 330 * TD − 200 * Int + 100 * Cmp) / Att.” Also “Adjusted Passing Yards per Attempt; the formula is (Yds + 20 * TD − 45 * Int) / Att” and yards per attempt as “Yds / Att”. A short page, about 3,000 characters, with the formulas in body text rather than images. sports-reference.com/cfb (read 15 Oct 2026).
- 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).