It's about time the NFL helped us all out and simplified the passer rating statistic. I appreciate the nature of the passer rating since it helps to rationalize comparisons of a position dominated by concrete statistics. With that being said, the statistic itself only gains relevance when it's observed in a collective group. Steve Young's frequent 130.0 ratings are meaningless unless they're placed next to Ryan Leaf's occasional 33.3's.

Much ado has been made of Tom Brady's performance on Saturday night against the Jaguars - and rightfully so. 26-28 for 262 yeards, 3 touchdowns, no interceptions, and 1 Bundchen is noteworthy. Headline writers around the globe were quick to throw out adjectives describing Brady's superlative performance.

"Near-Perfect Brady Bounces Jaguars"

"Golden Boy Almost 100% Pure"

Most of the columns that began with this theme were almost assured to subsequently point out that Brady's passer rating for the game came in at a stunning 141.4.

Most everyone - including myself - thought to themselves, "man, that's high". I mean it's higher than 100, which is usually good...but it's way lower than 200. Is that bad? What does the passer rating mean, exactly?

The passer rating system is comprised of 4 main quarterback statistics: completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdowns per attempt, and interceptions per attempt. These components are mixed and mangled to achieve a statistic that top out at 158.3.  You're telling me these fans have any idea what that means?

Long story short, the highest passer rating a quarterback can achieve is 158.3 - so the statistic itself is concrete. With that being said, why can't they do everyone a favor and multiply the passer rating by some number so that everyone's passer rating is relative to 100.0 - a ceiling we've all been used to since Kindergarten.

The NFL passer rating is a contrived statistic - meaning it takes actual data from each of the 4 main components and multiples them to a fixed variable that is computed by looking at historical averages. Since this is a contrived statistic, why not take it one step further to make it easier to understand?

It works like this: 158.3 is the highest passer rating possible - to make that equal 100.0, we have to multiply it by .6317. In relative terms to 100.0, the general public would have a better perception of how "perfect" a quarterback was on any given day. We like 100. We're comfortable with 100. When I see quarterback ratings above 100.0, it looks like they've been passed through Canada's stupid ass metric system - and that's not fun for anyone.

Running the quarterback through this system produces the career top 5 list below (current NFL standard for passer rating in parenthesis):

1.- Steve Young: 61.14 (96.8)
2.- Kurt Warner: 60.54 (95.7)
3.- Daunte Culpepper: 58.87 (93.2)
4.- Peyton Manning: 58.29 (92.29)
5.- Joe Montana: 58.28 (92.26)

Tom Brady's performance on Sunday would've landed him in the 89.32 range - which is easier to fathom and relate to "perfection" - especially when coupled with some of the league's historical bests. Heck, I'll even throw in a few bonus points for the whole Gisele thing.

.6317

Remember it. Trying to explain this whole process to Sean Salisbury is enough incentive to push for the campaign.