Football: Glavic tops QB rankings

Yes, it's the third* annual look at the best-passing quarterbacks in the league, just in time for the first week of playoffs across the country.

Usually, I use adjusted net yards per attempt, adjusted for the conference, but there are two changes to the calculations this year.

First, and most importantly, sacks are no longer included, so technically it's no longer "adjusted net yards." The CIS, in its infinite wisdom, didn't report sacks or sack yards for individual players in 2009 and I'm not going through the play-by-play for all the games to find them. So for anyone who avoids a lot of sack yardage, mentally adjust his ranking up a bit.

Then, I regressed the completion percentages for each quarterback towards his conference average, just to eliminate any strange results like someone completing 75% of his passes (that just shouldn't happen). This second change really only affected the top 3 quarterbacks in the end (and not by much), but it lets me sleep better at night.

The league average is still 100, so 185 means an extra 85 adjusted yards gained per every 100 gained by the average quarterback in that player's conference. Anyone with 100 attempts or more is included (regular season only).

And, as always, this is a rather basic measure. Quality of teammates, quality of opposition, and the game conditions all affect a player's performance, as you all know. As a reference (but not for comparison, due to the lack of sacks this year), here are last year's rankings (and there's a link to 2005-2007 there as well).

Top 10 best-passing quarterbacks (at least 100 attempts), 2009
185, Erik Glavic, Calgary
177, Benoît Groulx, Laval
130, Michael Faulds, Western
127, Danny Brannagan, Queen's
120, Jack Creighton, SMU
120, Justin Dunk, Guelph
120, J-P Shoiry, Sherbrooke
117, Kyle Quinlan, McMaster
115, Brad Sinopoli, Ottawa
112, Steve Snyder, StFX

Can we just give the Hec to Glavic now? Or at least give him the Chris Flynn Award for best quarterback....what, that doesn't exist?

Also, this really was the year of the veteran quarterback in the CIS: aside from the two who broke the all-time passing record, we have four other top 10 QBs here who appeared in the (not-for-direct-comparison!) top 10 lists in previous years' rankings. Dunk was in the top 15 a few times himself. And Sinopoli's just a first-year starting quarterback, but he did fine.

The above list is subject to change as soon as all of those players are inevitably declared ineligible. (Come on, would you be surprised at this point?)

* Okay, not really. Once last August, once last fall, and once more now. But "third annual" sounds more impressive.