Mapping NFL QBs to Dungeons & Dragons Roster for 2024

It’s the doldrums of the offseason, which means everyone is getting into their favorite/least favorite activities: quarterback rankings! Flaggers get all the love, but also get all the rankings. I find ranking players to be a bit of a chore these days, with the difference between the 13th and 15th best QBs not being that big of a gap to worry about. There are more fun ways to discuss quarterbacking in the NFL, which has so many different flavors these days. With the advent of more and more college-style passing games in the NFL, quarterback styles have become so varied that very few QBs play the position the same way, making it difficult to classify them.

But you know what’s easy? Dungeons and Dragons Alignment Charts! For the uninitiated, DnD alignment charts are used in a game to help guide your character’s moral compass. The style in which you play your DnD session is based on this alignment and is divided into three categories: Legal, Neutral, and Chaotic. Lawful means that the character is acting in accordance with a code of conduct or a law, whether good or bad. Chaotic, well I think you can guess what that means. The medium is neutral: he does his best, but does not always respect the law. Good, neutral and evil are also quite simple, you should understand it by now.

But the question is: what does this have to do with NFL QBs? Well, let me shed some light on the subject (if you know what Disney movie this is from, can we be friends? I think that makes us friends). Using advanced statistics and film, we can place NFL QBs into roster charts, choosing to discuss the most talked about position in sports in a way that doesn’t make people want to s ‘pull out the hair. How I did this through several things:

• Film: I used film as a background for board placement, trying to match individual playing style and process to their stats.
• Big Time Throws: I used PFF’s Big Time Throw metric to show how successful QBs are when leaning into chaos, or how good they are at completing the most difficult passes.
• Turnover Passes: This is the same as BTT, but the result is much worse. Think of it like attacking a goblin, but rolling a 1 instead of an 18. Sometimes bad things happen as a passer, and this metric measures that. Higher TWP, more chaos
• Pressure sack rate: This is one of the best indicators of how an NFL QB plays. The pressure isn’t always on the QB, but how often you can create pressure and ensure those plays don’t turn into major negatives separates the good QBs from the great ones. The higher the rate of layoffs under pressure, the greater the chaos.
• Passes outside the pocket: Every QB wants to be Patrick Mahomes early in his career, rotating and distributing outside the pocket to create big plays. However, going out of pocket can be incredibly volatile and lead to disaster. The more a QB relies on passes outside the pocket, the more chaotic they are.

With that in mind, here is the first iteration of the NFL Quarterback Roster Chart. Everything here is now canon and cannot be refuted.

Patrick Mahomes and Neutral Good

If I had done this in 2020 or 2021, Mahomes would most likely be in a chaotic place. While he’s still fantastic, he led the NFL in passes outside the pocket and generally leaned more into his athleticism and creative style of play that everyone tries to emulate.

However, as his game has matured, so has his lineup. His passing outside the pocket has dropped significantly, but his ability to avoid sacks while playing at an incredibly high level keeps him in good shape. Plus, because his name is Patrick Mahomes, he’ll be in the right region until some Space Jam-type monsters take his powers.

The chaos of trying to recreate Josh Allen

When I had the idea for this painting, I had Josh Allen in mind. Professor Chaos himself, he finished 2023 second in total passes out of the pocket and second in Big Time Throws, but also second in Turnover Worthy Passes. He lives in a world of chaos, which has been the Bills’ greatest asset and greatest detractor. However, with every QB below him, it shows the problem with trying to recreate a QB like Josh Allen in the NFL. Allen is the rare QB with the athletic tools to have a high floor, while developing exponentially to complement the high ceiling we get today. For every Josh Allen, we have a Drew Lock, Will Levis, or Sam Howell: guys who live in a world of chaos but don’t have the refinement or athletic tools to make it work, which makes them chaotic evil .

The other QB in Chaotic Good is Joe Burrow, and this also allows me to explain why I think we should depict chaos in a different way. Burrow is a chaotic QB: while he only had 90 snaps under pressure in 2023, Burrow’s sack rate was higher than that of his contemporaries Allen, Mahomes and Justin Herbert. 17 Big Time Throws and nine turnover-worthy passes also make him look very good. However, it’s the style that Burrow plays with that makes him chaotic. Even though he doesn’t look like Allen, Burrow welcomes pressure and teams blitzing him. He chooses to overcome pressure with his mind rather than his body. He likes to be in a vacuum, where he can see and change everything on a whim. It’s a wild style of play, but it’s a bit more tempered due to its lack of Allen’s athleticism. Although his chaos looks different, he is still a pretty chaotic QB.

Rookie QBs

I’m convinced that almost every rookie QB in the NFL starts in the chaotic neutral tier. With the way the game has changed at the college level, everyone plays in such a wild style that works in college, but may not work in the NFL. This is why I didn’t use their college stats to rank them, because it’s much easier to be a better athlete than someone who just got into college. For the 2024 rookie class, all of the top QBs are in the chaotic neutral class, except for Bo Nix and Michael Penix Jr. Both of those guys remain neutral, but neither really leans into chaos. Penix is ​​a stationary passer who doesn’t really like pressure, and Nix doesn’t accept as many passes down the field. Can they get on and off the board? Absolutely, an important thing to recognize is that almost no QB stays in one place throughout their career. This is the fun part of development!

How to place injured QBs

I really struggled with some QBs who didn’t finish the season due to injury. Indianapolis’ Anthony Richardson was the easiest of the group, placing him in chaotic neutral due to his penchant for big plays, but their success was a bit hit or miss in his style of play. Jets’ Aaron Rodgers, however, was more difficult . He only played four snaps in 2023, and the last time we saw a full season from him, he wasn’t the same Rodgers we were used to. I placed him in legal neutral, because as his game has matured, he’s done a lot, let alone passes outside the pocket.

The biggest question mark was Cleveland’s Deshaun Watson. I really had a hard time placing him because the last time he played a full season was 2020, and those 2020 numbers for Watson were, wow. 42 big throws to 14 turnover-worthy passes, but that’s combined with a less-than-stellar sack rate when pressured and the fifth-most passes outside the pocket. This would have made him a lock for the sake of chaos.

However, four years is a long time ago, and Watson just isn’t the same QB. While his turnover rate under pressure has remained high (13th among QBs with 50 attempts), his ratio of big throws to turnover-worthy passes has declined significantly. He hasn’t been good enough as a passer in Cleveland to justify… much of everything that’s happened since he moved, and because of that, he’s going into chaotic trouble, with a small chance that this will change in the future.