NFL Analysis
1/22/25
6 min read
2025 NFL Championship Week Quarterback Power Rankings: Who's The Best Passer Left?
Welcome to the Conference Championship edition of the quarterback rankings. Only four quarterbacks remain. Three of the four remaining quarterbacks were first in these rankings at some point this season, making for a fun final group of passers.
These are not your typical quarterback rankings, which is why you might see some differences from what you’d expect to see in a ranking system that was built off a box score or reputation.
For the rankings, we’re sticking with the regular season grading system. As a reminder, our grading system combines the skill set rankings (how good a quarterback is in a vacuum) and production (based on a composite of EPA per play and success rate from TruMedia) for the 2024 season.
The skill set rankings are from me, watching and grading each quarterback in the individual categories. If you feel like I hate your favorite quarterback, those are the rankings you should be looking at and yelling at me for.
The skill score is then combined with the production score to get the full rankings.
The full rankings, including each individual skill set, will be at the bottom of this article. If you liked the old rankings, you can filter by Skill Score. If you're more interested in production, you can filter by that, too.
All stats are provided by TruMedia.
Conference Championship Round Quarterback Rankings
1. Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills 
Skill Score: 9.70 | Production Score: 7.62 | Ranking Score: 8.66
Josh Allen hasn’t needed to go into hero mode yet this postseason. That’s a credit to the Bills' roster-building and finally getting the type of running game this franchise has wanted for years. Across two playoff games this season, Allen has only dropped back 55 times. His 23 dropbacks against the Ravens were his fewest in a playoff game, and his game against Denver featured his third-fewest playoff dropbacks.
That doesn’t take away from what Allen has done when he has thrown the ball. The seam throw to Khalil Shakir at the start of the game was perfectly placed, and we know Allen can go wild (complimentary) whenever necessary. He’s just only needed to be smart and accurate with the ball to this point — an impressive development for both Allen and the offense.
It’s likely we’re going to have to see more from Allen individually against the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, but the addition of that run game means Allen won’t have to be on his own on offense.
When these two teams met in the regular season, Allen was blitzed on a third of his dropbacks and pressured on 42.2 percent but did not take a sack.
2. Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs
Skill Score: 9.78 | Production Score: 6.04 | Ranking Score: 7.91
Patrick Mahomes had his lowest career success rate in a playoff game against the Texans, but there were still enough plays to keep the offense moving. The Chiefs mostly avoided throws outside the numbers and worked to get Travis Kelce open in the middle of the field. Even the best thro outside the numbers went to Kelce on a corner route when lined up in the backfield in the first quarter.
Kelce also had a big catch and run, and then, of course, he was the target for Mahomes’s touchdown pass while diving forward in the grip of a defender.
Just 46.9 percent of Mahomes’s dropbacks against the Texans came with a clean pocket, which would be his lowest rate of the 2024 season. Pressure from the edge was still an issue, and Mahomes had his second-highest sack rate of the year.
Mahomes still got the ball out quickly, which was the antidote to pressure late in the season, but the Texans didn’t have any trouble getting to the quarterback. That might not be as big of an issue against the Bills, who don’t have the overpowering forces on the edge that the Texans do.
The last time the Chiefs and Bills played, Mahomes held onto the ball for an average of 3.13 seconds, his highest of the season. The coverage often forced Mahomes to hold onto the ball, and after an interception and a sack to start the game, he settled down and was able to pick apart some of the holes.
3. Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders
Skill Score: 9.26 | Production Score: 6.51 | Ranking Score: 7.89
There has not been a more fun quarterback in the playoffs this season than Jayden Daniels. It’s been the culmination of all of the development from the quarterback and offense coming together for this playoff run.
Early in the season, Daniels had such a high rate of scrambles and was barely throwing down the field. He helped beat the Lions by standing strong in the pocket under pressure and unloading some incredible throws down the field.
Daniels was great under pressure and made a handful of throws that he would likely have attempted at the start of the season. He was only hit twice under pressure and did not take a sack.
By EPA per play, Daniels had his third-highest EPA per play of the season in the Divisional Round game, behind a Week 3 game against the Bengals and Week 9 against the Giants. Both of those defenses were in the bottom eight of EPA per play during the regular season.
In two games against the Eagles, he averaged 0.13 EPA per play, but that came with one bad game (-0.08 in Week 11) and one better one (0.31 in Week 16). During the Week 16 game, Daniels played a bit closer to what we saw against the Lions, getting the ball out quickly (2.44 average seconds to throw) and often throwing short to beat the pass rush and throw in front of the secondary.
4. Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia Eagles
Skill Score: 9.10 | Production Score: 6.01 | Ranking Score: 7.56
For the second game in a row, the Eagles’ passing game was a bit underwhelming. Jalen Hurts was the only quarterback in the Divisional Round to finish with negative EPA. The Rams were able to get some free rushers with sim pressures — often dropping off the line from the offense’s left and sending linebacker Omar Speights up the middle — and when those got through, Hurts had a tough time reacting. The sack to end the first half and the safety happened against those looks.
Hurts was pressured on 50 percent of his dropbacks against the Rams and sacked on 46.7 percent of those pressures — a 25.9 percent sack rate overall.
While he completed 75 percent of his passes, his average depth of completion was just 2.8 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.
Against the Commanders in the first meeting, Hurts had his highest rate of throws go between 1 and 10 air yards (67.9 percent), which proved to be a good way for the offense to create yards after the catch. He suffered a concussion in the Week 16 meeting, which placed him in concussion protocol until just days before the Wild Card game against the Packers.
Full Conference Championship Week Quarterback Rankings
