It's not up for debate, for the most part, which quarterbacks are the absolute best and absolute worst in the NFL, but where the debate does begin is the individual placements in those rankings. The quarterback discussions are ones that never truly seem to end, and no one ever seems to agree with rankings.
We're going to contribute to that here. Instead of normal quarterback power rankings, which are not hard to find, we've taken a different appaorach and have ranked all 32 starters in tiers. We have developed six tiers of quarterbacks, with Tier 6 being the worst and Tier 1 being the best.
For these rankings, the order in which the quarterbacks appear is in no particularly order - we've simply lumped them all into six different tiers, so let's dive in here.
Ranking all 32 starting quarterbacks by tiers for the 2026 NFL Season
Tier 6: The worst - Jacoby Brissett, Geno Smith, Kirk Cousins, Deshaun Watson
It's just the harsh truth. No matter who it is, there are always the 'worst.' in any given position. For the quarterbacks, the worst starters in the league appear to be Jacoby Brissett, Geno Smith, Kirk Cousins, and Deshaun Watson.
Brissett has been a journeyman backup for years, so his placement in this ranking is not a major shock. Smith was a backup for much of his career but did then breakout with the Seattle Seahawks back in 2022. He's regressed since then and has thrown 32 interceptions over the past two seasons.
Cousins did have a nice little stint there of being one of the more efficient quarterbacks in the league, but while he was efficient for years, he had a rather low ceiling and just was not much of a playoff quarterback. He was also playing at a low-end level during the end of his tenure with the Atlanta Falcons.
Watson was the next best quarterback for a while there with the Houston Texans, but you really could not think of a bigger fall-off ever since his arrival with the Cleveland Browns, and it's still shocking just how much he's regressed.
There is also a solid chance that all four of these players aren't starting in 2027 and could even get benched this year. Heck, it's far from a guarantee that Watson wins the starting job with the Browns, but what we do know for a fact is that this group is the worst at the position for 2026.
Add us as a preferred source on Google