Week 3, 2026 season (games through Sept 19, 2026) — corrected composite build.

One number from three ingredients: an opponent-adjusted efficiency rating, raw per-play production, and the betting market. The adjusted rating does nearly all of the work, because it is the only one of the three that accounts for who a team has actually played. The other two are there to catch what it misses, and an earlier version of this board leaned on them far too hard — a single blowout of a bad opponent, or an unremarkable preseason win total, was enough to carry a team thirty spots higher than its play deserved. That is fixed. How the three are weighted is ours, and it is a judgment call rather than a standard.

The number is roughly how many points per game a team projects to beat an average FBS opponent by, so +29.2 is a four-touchdown favorite against average and −27.3 is the same margin the other way. Off and Def are national ranks out of 138 in the on-field offense and defense scores, where 1 is best and the market plays no part, since odds do not split by side of the ball. No AP or Coaches poll touches any of it.

Through Week 3, 2026 season. New this week: the grade now adjusts for how good the defense actually was. Beat a bad defense and the game counts for a bit less; beat a good one and it counts for more. That is a real change to the number, not a relabelling — several quarterbacks moved ten places or more, and the three who fell furthest had all just played weak defenses.

The grade blends two things: how many points a quarterback's plays were worth per snap, and how often those plays gained enough to keep the drive on schedule. Efficiency carries the larger share, staying on schedule the rest. Both are measured against the national average, so zero is average and higher is better. Early-season numbers are pulled toward that average in proportion to how little a quarterback has thrown, which is why a hot fifty snaps does not automatically win the board.

The defense listed beside each last game — Tough, Average or Weak — is the same strength measure the adjustment uses, shown so you can see what a number is built on. Two quarterbacks faced opponents with no rating, shown as unrated.

Completion percentage appears in the full table for color only. It is raw accuracy with no adjustment for how hard the throws were, and it does not feed the grade at all. Garbage time is stripped out. Passer identity comes from the official play-by-play text checked against the roster, which covers about nine in ten pass plays nationally; the rest were left out rather than guessed at. Tiers are recalculated from scratch every week, and three games is still a small sample.