Lions as a team had a perfect 158.3 passer rating, but Jared Goff fell just short

At the end of the Lions’ win over the Seahawks on Monday night, Troy Aikman mused on ESPN about how the NFL’s official passer rating system could possibly give Jared Goff something other than a “perfect” passer rating for his efforts. The reason relates to the touchdown pass Goff caught, but didn’t throw.

As a team, the Lions went 19-for-19 passing for 273 yards, with three touchdowns and no interceptions. That translates to a perfect passer rating of 158.3. But that includes the touchdown pass that Amon-Ra St. Brown threw to Goff on a trick play. Individually, Goff completed 18 of 18 passes for 292 yards, with two touchdowns and no interceptions. That means he threw a touchdown on 11.1 percent of his passes, and that’s just shy of “perfect” for passer rating purposes.

To finish a game with a perfect passer rating requires throwing at least 11.875 percent of passes for touchdowns, with no interceptions, a completion percentage of 77.5 percent and at least 12.5 yards per attempt. Goff managed three of those four but was just short on touchdown passes, which means Goff’s passer rating for the game was 155.8. If instead of calling the pass to Goff the Lions had called a pass for Goff to throw a touchdown, Goff would have finished the game with a perfect 158.3.

Passer rating has been the NFL’s official statistic for ranking passers for more than half a century, and there’s no indication that it’s going anywhere. It’s far from the best way to rank quarterbacks, in part because of those arbitrary cutoffs like a touchdown percentage of 11.875 being “perfect.” But it’s what the NFL uses, and that’s why it draws so much attention from fans and the media.

The Lions are the 57th team in NFL history to finish a game with a perfect 158.3 passer rating, and the second team to do it this year, following the Cardinals in Week Two. It was a historic night for Goff, even if the passer rating system says he fell short of perfect.