NFL QB Rankings before Week 3: Derek Carr, come get your flowers

The surprise isn't that Derek Carr is playing this well. It's that he's racking up gaudy numbers while hardly having to throw the ball to a thin receiving corps.

Carr's five touchdown passes in two weeks are tied for the league lead (with Baker Mayfield and one ahead of Sam Darnold. We'll get there). His 39 pass attempts are 31st-most in the NFL and would be dead last among starting quarterback had Jordan Love not been injured in Week 1. As a result, Carr is throwing a touchdown on better than one in eight attempts.

His 11.4 yards per pass attempt are nearly two full yards more than second-place Mayfield. He's got a passer rating of 142.4 and a QBR of 96.2. He is, in the New Orleans Saints' 2-0 start, dang near perfect.

This will not last, at least at this rate. Carr has long been an underrated passer, but his 30s have been the backdrop to clean, efficient and generally underwhelming quarterbacking. The Saints saw something more than the Las Vegas Raiders did and signed him to a contract worth $150 million, only to see him play almost the entire 2023 season hurt. While he's currently maximizing his returns from Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed and Alvin Kamara (all very good, even if Kamara's odometer is reaching unpleasant levels), there's little reliable depth behind them.

For now, let's enjoy the small sample size. Let's bask in Carr putting up video game numbers for an offense yet to be held to fewer than 40 points. Eventually he'll degrade from "historic" to merely "pretty good" and it will be enough to keep New Orleans in the playoff hunt barring injury. For now, he's the NFL's best quarterback.

Who comes after him? Fortunately, we've got a metric to help figure that out.

Expected points added (EPA) is a concept that’s been around since 1970. It’s effectively a comparison between what an average quarterback could be expected to do on a certain down and what he actually did — and how it increased his team’s chances of scoring. The model we use comes from The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin and his RBSDM.com website, which is both wildly useful AND includes adjusted EPA, which accounts for defensive strength. It considers the impact of penalties and does not negatively impact passers for fumbles after a completion.

The other piece of the puzzle is completion percentage over expected (CPOE), which is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s a comparison of all the completions a quarterback would be expected to make versus the ones he actually did. Like EPA, it can veer into the negatives and higher is better. So if you chart all 32 primary quarterbacks — the ones who played at least 32 snaps through two weeks — you get a chart that looks like this:

Try to divide that into tiers and you get a chart that looks like this:

1. 1. Temporarily elite (it could last!)

1. Derek Carr, New Orleans Saints: 0.284 EPA+CPOE composite

2. Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills: 0.267

3. Kyler Murray, Arizona Cardinals: 0.248

4. Baker Mayfield, Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 0.224

Murray and Carr both torched overmatched opponents in Week 2, but did so while derailing 2023 playoff teams (the Los Angeles Rams and Dallas Cowboys, respectively). Allen is careening toward MVP votes if he can continue to buoy a Bills offense with limited playmakers. Mayfield is proving Dave Canales wasn't endemic to his success in Tampa.

2. Jayden Daniels? Huh.

5. Sam Darnold, Minnesota Vikings: 0.180 EPA+CPOE composite

6. Geno Smith, Seattle Seahawks: 0.139

7. Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders: 0.138

8. Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia Eagles: 0.136

Darnold keeps showing up and playing sound football, which we've seen in stretches but never for a full season. He's got work to do to prove he's not just a better version of Joshua Dobbs. Smith threw 44 passes against a tough Patriots defense that traveled an average distance of 8.4 yards downfield and wasn't off target with a single one. That's remarkable but feels fairly commonplace for the veteran.

Hurts has thrown potentially crippling interceptions late in both the Eagles' games this season, but he's running well. Daniels is working with training wheels, as his 4.6 air yards per pass are the lowest in the league. But he's also flying, avoiding interceptions and averaging 66 rush yards per game. The Commanders can work with that.

3. Three guys you trust

9. Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs: 0.114 EPA+CPOE composite

10. Brock Purdy, San Francisco 49ers: 0.113

11. C.J. Stroud, Houston Texans: 0.110

12. Gardner Minshew II, Las Vegas Raiders: 0.105

2023's Super Bowl starters, the reigning rookie of the year and... Gardner Minshew. Cool, cool.

Minshew leads the league in completion rate (77.5 percent) but his average throw is traveling just 5.2 yards downfield. That set him up for downfield success against the Ravens, however; Minshew completed five of his seven throws that sailed at least 15 yards beyond the line of scrimmage to score the Week 2 upset.

4. Early season quarterback purgatory

13. Joe Burrow, Cincinnati Bengals: 0.072 EPA+CPOE composite

14. Justin Fields, Pittsburgh Steelers: 0.070

15. Kirk Cousins, Atlanta Falcons: 0.062

16. Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers: 0.059

17. Will Levis, Tennessee Titans: 0.057

18. Jacoby Brissett, New England Patriots: 0.055

19. Aaron Rodgers, New York Jets: 0.051

Burrow's Bengals are starting slow, as is tradition, but he was significantly better vs. the Chiefs than he was in Week 1 against the Patriots. The Steelers aren't asking Fields to throw much or far, and he's got a 69 percent completion rate (good!) on just 43 throws (oh) that travel an average distance of 6.2 yards downfield (less good). Cousins came alive when the Falcons needed him most and kept them from falling into a two-game hole in the NFC South standings to begin the season.

If you're looking for a reason to doubt this metric, Levis's inclusion as even an average starting quarterback would be the place to begin. Rodgers has only attempted four deep throws in two games as a Jet, suggesting he's still coming along from the torn Achilles that ended his 2023.

5. It's early, but it's not encouraging

20. Matthew Stafford, Los Angeles Rams: 0.042 EPA+CPOE composite

21. Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins: 0.040

22. Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville Jaguars: 0.039

23. Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens: 0.038

24. Jordan Love, Green Bay Packers: 0.028

Stafford may be stuck here since his top two wideouts and some of the most important pieces of his offensive line are all hurt. Lawrence is captain of a Jaguars offense that has no navigational tools to speak of. Jackson is crushing the intermediate range, completing nearly 70 percent of his passes between 11 and 20 yards downfield. He's struggling with his deep throws, however, completing just one of eight to travel 20-plus yards. If the Packers need to ease Love back into the lineup once healthy, they can apparently do so by letting Josh Jacobs mash another deficient run defense into pudding.

6. Things will (probably) improve

25. Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys: 0.011 EPA+CPOE composite

26. Deshaun Watson, Cleveland Browns: 0.003

27. Bo Nix, Denver Broncos: 0.001

28. Jared Goff, Detroit Lions: -0.004

29. Anthony Richardson, Indianapolis Colts: -0.007

This tier is led by the two players with the largest contract guarantees in NFL history. It's fair to assume Prescott will get better. Nothing we've seen over the last two seasons suggests Watson, once accused of more than 20 counts of sexual misconduct and what the NFL itself described as "predatory behavior," will follow suit. Goff looked fundamentally confused at the end of his Week 2 loss to the Buccaneers. Richardson's route progression remains a work in progress.

7. It's BAD

30. Daniel Jones, New York Giants: -0.016 EPA+CPOE composite

31. Bryce Young, Carolina Panthers: -0.020

32. Caleb Williams, Chicago Bears: -0.024

Young got his own tier in the graphic above, just because his EPA score is nearly twice as bad as 31st-place Williams. His -11 CPOE is the worst in the league as well, which genuinely makes me curious about how the composite score somehow ranks better in this battle of recent first overall picks. We all know Young is the worse passer right now, correct?

This article originally appeared on For The Win: NFL QB Rankings before Week 3: Derek Carr, come get your flowers