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Pro Football Focus finished up with their Top 50 best player rankings entering the 2019 season on Thursday, which should cause some nice debate on analytics. New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees finished out 5th in their rankings, one spot ahead of Chiefs’ superstar Patrick Mahomes.
Here’s what PFF had to say on the ranking:
On his 489 regular season attempts, Brees’ ball placement was deemed to be ‘perfect’ 20.0% of the time and ‘accurate’ 71.5% of the time, which ranked sixth and first among the league’s quarterbacks this year, respectively. Among the 44 quarterbacks with at least 100 dropbacks throughout the regular season, Brees’ positively-graded throw rate of 27.6% ranked fourth, while his absurdly low negatively-graded throw rate of 7.0% was far and away the best mark in the league.
Brees took home PFF’s 2018 top passer award following what was a record-setting season for the veteran signal-caller this past season.
PFF’s Mark Chichester added that Brees was the clear top passing QB in the league in 2018, being the only quarterback above a 93.0 grade. Of course, no one should overlook what Patrick Mahomes did for Kansas City last season. He was certainly one of the most exciting players to watch all season and was simply magical. Plus, he took down that whole MVP thing for last season. Brees joins teammates Michael Thomas (12th), Cameron Jordan (16th), Alvin Kamara (36th), and Ryan Ramczyk (45th) as the Saints representation in the rankings.