The Bear Essentials: Explaining My Quarterback Grading System

An introduction to the Quarterback grading system I will be using for the 2025 season.

I’ve been obsessed with the X’s and O’s of football for as long as I can remember. I started playing organized football at the Pop Warner level (and I use “organized” lightly, since most of it was just chasing whoever had the ball). Unfortunately, my team had the misfortune of using the Green Bay Packers’ colors, so some of my earliest football memories involve wearing that cursed combination of green and gold.

But I digress.

When I wasn’t on the field, I was in my room drawing up plays with plastic army men, pretending I was the next great Chicago Bears quarterback. That love for the game only grew stronger. By junior high, I was idolizing Denver Broncos wide receiver Ed McCaffrey during his All-Pro 1998 season.

I was convinced I was going to be an NFL wide receiver. I even wore number 87 throughout junior high and high school in Ed’s honor. I played WR for seven years, earning a spot on the JV squad as a sophomore. The NFL dream didn’t pan out (I like to blame knee injuries), but I came away with a deep understanding of the relationship between a quarterback and his receiver, and a strong grasp of the game overall.

All of this is a long way of saying one thing: the love never died. I’ve been a student of the game for a long time, and that passion has led me to reviewing game film, focusing on the quarterback position, and building my own system to score and evaluate performances.

Think PFF, but with more transparency.

How it works

Every play where the quarterback is the focal point, whether as a passer or primary runner, is reviewed and assigned a grade. This includes plays that are negated by penalties and two-point conversion attempts. The grading scale ranges from +1.00 to -1.75. Negative plays are treated fairly harshly and can be compounded. For example, a poor throw that results in a turnover would receive the lowest grade of -1.75.

How I determine those grades is a long explanation, especially since I use ten different designations when scoring.

The short version is that I combine my years of experience in football, both as a player and as a fan, to inform how I apply each grade.

The long version is available if you’re interested in a full breakdown of the process and how everything is evaluated. Just click here.

Am I an expert? No, definitely not. At the end of the day, I am just a fan of the sport who wants to share his passion with others. Still, some of the data I collected independently from the 2024 season happens to align quite well with PFF’s metrics from that same year.

For example:

• PFF uses a 0 to 100 scale, with 60 being average. In the 2024 NFL season, the average passing grade across all quarterbacks was 64.9, slightly above average.
• My scale is open-ended, but a score between -2.00 and +2.00 is considered average. Across the 52 games I reviewed from 2024, the average quarterback score came out to 2.116, also slightly above average.

When I compared my scores to PFF’s for each of Caleb Williams’ games in 2024 and plotted them on a graph, the results were strikingly similar.

Which leads me to believe that my ability to evaluate a quarterback’s performance is at least comparable to PFF’s, based on a 17-game sample for one player and a 52-game sample for league-wide averages.

So what does this mean for the WCG community?

In short, once the regular season kicks off (and possibly even during the preseason, snap count permitting), you can expect weekly film reviews and detailed scoring of our franchise quarterback, all from me, along with the insights that come with it. I also plan to post a “rewind review” of a 2024 game to give you a clear idea of what to expect. For an example of how that looks in action, check out the following post on Twitter.

I’m very excited to be bringing this to you all here at WCG. The 2025 Bears season is panning out to be one of the most exciting seasons in Bears history, and with Ben Johnson now in the mix, I expect some very interesting games to review. This whole project is combining a lifelong love of football with way too much time watching film and taking notes. I hope it adds something fun and thoughtful to your weekly Bears experience. Let’s dive into this season together, one throw at a time!

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Gary Baugher Jr. is a rookie contributor to WCG, bringing football insight backed by over 16 years of experience in organized football and more than 30 years as a passionate fan of the game. You can follow him on Twitter at @iamcogs.