2025 NFL Playoffs quarterback rankings: From C.J. Stroud to which MVP frontrunner at No. 1?

After 18 weeks of the 2024 NFL season, the 2025 NFL Playoffs are set to begin.

As expected, the vast majority of the 14 teams to make it to the second season are ones with franchise quarterbacks entrenched in a league that still values passing above all else. Some enter January with a chance to prove themselves as winners. Others are trying to rekindle past glory. A few are trying to turn their MVP candidacy into something more — especially against the backdrop of Super Bowl droughts in Buffalo and Detroit.

We know who’ll be playing when the Wild Card round kicks off (and who’ll join them a week later in the Divisional Round after a bye). But which team rests its world championship hopes on the sturdiest shoulder?

In order to rank these players, I put together a basic formula that combines advanced stats, basic stats, their histories and the way you feel watching them play. All 14 quarterbacks were sorted across seven categories:

• expected points added (EPA) per dropback

• completion percentage over expected (CPOE), which rates their connection success vs. what an average quarterback would be expected to make

• passer rating

• QBR

• playmaking ability — for simplicity’s sake, this was totaled by counting the number of games in which each quarterback had a completion of at least 35 yards and the games in which he had a run of at least 15 yards

• playoff wins

• and gut feeling — effectively how confident I am about them in the playoffs after a decade of covering the NFL.

Who came out on top? It was a three-way battle, but one quarterback stood tall above the rest.