• Print
• Email

"Football is like nuclear warfare.  There are no winners, only survivors" - Frank Gifford

Welcome back to the TSL Quarterback Power Rankings!  If you've read our article in the past (and there must be at least a few of you) then you’re familiar with the concept – every week we share our rankings for the Top QBs in the League, and discuss who’s trending up and who's trending down.  We on the QB Power Rankings Committee are not what you'd call "great writers" (or even "very good" writers... check out the Godfather and the Sentinel if you want better writing) so we lean heavily on graphs and stats instead.  For our pre-season article each session, we like to make a few predictions and re-print an explanation of how these Power Rankings work, which we've copied and pasted almost verbatim from the last three pre-season reviews  (See? Lazy writing...)  

So a little Q&A to refresh your memories:

“There are sixty teams in the TSL this season!  Are you going to show rankings for all 60 starting QB’s every week?”

At minimum, the Top Ten will be shown EVERY week.  We always expand as the season goes on, so you'll see a Top 15, Top 20... last season we got to a Top 30, which was more than two thirds of the League.  This season: we vow to do better.

“Is this going to be heavily biased towards the higher divisions?”

In a word: yes.  The purpose of a Power Ranking is to highlight the absolute best in the League, and for the most part the best are competing AGAINST the best.  We will absolutely be acknowledging the performances (good and bad) of Quarterbacks in the lower divisions as well, but it's rare that a lower division QB will crack the Top Twenty, and that's the way it should be.  Generally speaking if you don't like your ranking, our advice is to try moving up a division next session.  The better your competition, the more credibility you earn for beating it.

"Do you take into account Breakfast Club performance for the Rankings?"

We take Breakfast Club into account, but as that's more of a casual league, we weight it much less than the other divisional play.

"Are gender team QBs treated differently in the Rankings?"

Not really.  A team's a team, and although gender team scores tend to be a little higher (every TD = minimum 8 points) we don't see much difference.  It takes skill to win with men; it takes skill to win with women.

"How are you ranking backup QBs if they come in and play better than some other team's starter?"

Generally we're only ranking one QB per team, even if you've got a player on your bench that you think could be a successful starter elsewhere.  And for teams with unreliable QBs who don't show up often enough for us to even KNOW who the starter is, we often leave them out of our rankings entirely... as they say, the best "ability" is "availability".  If you want to get ranked, show up and play as often as you can.

"I'm new to this League and people don't know me yet!  How do I get ranked when I'm still an unknown?"

For starters, you should play really well.  If you're scoring a lot of points, we WILL notice you.  There are eight more teams this session than the Fall 2020 season, so we probably DON'T know who you all are yet.  Email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to introduce yourself, and please, be patient.  If you're the highest scoring team in the League in Week 2, that doesn't mean we're anointing you as the next Chris Cole just yet.  Keep at it, play well, and we promise eventually we will recognize you.

“So you’re only ranking QB’s… what about the rest of us?”

Oh, we didn’t forget about the rest of you.  In addition to the QB Rankings, we will do our best to put out other rankings that the rest of you can enjoy – best team offenses, best team defenses, best referees, best at bar …  ranking anything is always fun.  Unless we rank you last, of course.

“You keep saying ‘we’.  Who is writing this?  Who determines these rankings?”

Don’t worry about who’s writing this.  Let’s be honest: If you knew who was on our Committee, you would incessantly whine to them about why you or your QB should be ranked higher every week.  Anonymity is key for journalism THIS important.  

And that's how the Power Rankings work.  We expect it's going to be an incredible season, with SIXTY teams battling for TSL supremacy.  Our official predictions for this year: 

• AWDIQ legend Vince Taverna drops out of the Top Ten as he has to contend with 16 D1 and D2 QBs playing in divisions above him
• Matty Ice and Dean Thompson will duke it out for the honor of highest ranked D2 QB, with... Matty getting the slight edge by end of the season? we think?
• Dylan Jaloza will crack the Top Twenty by end of the season.  With all those weapons, how can he not?
• A mid-season replacement will come out of nowhere to crack the Top Ten (think Bro Kleckler or Terrell Bolden last year)
• Scotty Drosendahl, now playing in D2, will make the Top Ten early and often
• Topper will continue to be the hardest player to rank, flashing brilliance one week, just to look like a washed up shell of an athlete the next.

But what do we know?  These were last year's predictions:  Matty Ice PLUMMETS in the rankings (he did, after taking the session off, so that was an easy one... though allegedly he's back this season); Joey Batts cracks the Top Five once again (we were right, as Joey spent three weeks last season in the #4 spot); Blase LaDuca cracks the Top Ten (we were wrong; 18th was the highest he got); Darryl Carr remains undefeated at #1 on the Quarterback Hair Rankings (obviously we were right); and Lucas Kramer from Vaspian, with a year of experience under his belt, has a break-out season to flirt with Top Ten status (he did not).  Three out of five... could be worse.

So there you go.  We don’t have any new “pre-season rankings” for you, because there are new teams and new faces and we don't know all the contenders yet. But here are the final “Top 30” rankings from the end of Fall 2020's regular season (which might have looked different if we had re-ranked them after playoffs…): 

For all you TSL history buffs out there that want to know QB Power Rankings data stretching back before the chart shown above, here is the entire history of the Top Ten going back the past three seasons that we've been Power Ranking (season three being shortened by one week due to COVID issues):

Chris Cole and Joey Batts are the only two QBs to be ranked in the Top Ten every week since the Power Rankings began, and Joey's streak is in jeopardy as we're not sure who's QBing for Mountain Dew Me this session (could be hard to make Top Ten if he's only QBing a D4 gender team).  Mark Dalfonso missed out in the first ever week of Power Rankings (a shameful omission on our part, but we can't correct it now) and then has been in the Top Five ever since... a streak that looks to be coming to an end with Marketing Mayors folding this session. Bobby McConnell missed the beginning of the Spring 2019 season and wasn't ranked for four weeks, though he's been in the Top Four ever since, and Matt Newman missed just one week as well (don't blame us, he should have played better).

Among active QBs, the returning Matty Ice has one of the highest average rankings at 3.06 (not counting the season he took off).  Excluding the injury weeks he wasn't ranked, Bobby has never left the Top Four (average rank: 2.32).  Bro Kleckler has only been ranked in the Top Ten once, but he's been almost unbeatable in D1 since taking over for TEIM and is a real threat to take the #1 spot if he continues to play at that level for a full season.  Chris Cole has never left the Top THREE (average rank: 1.52) and has a TSL record 10 consecutive weeks at #1 (he's currently on a four game streak at the top spot dating back to last season).  This is your Top Tier of TSL Quarterbacks ladies and gentlemen, the gold standard you have to beat if you want to be considered the best of the best.  Good luck with that!

As always, if you have any thoughts on why you hate this article (your team’s QB should be ranked higher?  not enough attention devoted to the Quarterback Hair Rankings?  our gross abuse of parentheses as a literary crutch for writing thoughts within thoughts?) please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..   

What’s YOUR ranking?

• Prev
• Next