Ranking all 32 NFL QBs after Week 10: Drake Maye, Mac Jones have Patriots fans feeling bittersweet

Our NFL quarterback rankings are back after a brief hiatus in Week 9, and there's plenty to dive into. Much has changed over the past couple Sundays, with the Week 10 slate in particular moving the needle for several of the best (and worst) signal-callers in the league.

It's becoming increasingly alarming just how wide the gap is between the bottom third of NFL quarterbacks and those in the top 20 or so. If you want to ascribe a loose tier structure, there is a clear and sizable break between Trevor Lawrence at No. 19 and those below him. And even in that case, it's not like Lawrence, Aaron Rodgers, and those in the middle zone are lighting up scoreboards right now (more on them in a moment).

The NFL has a quarterback problem

So many teams need to rethink their present setup and most certainly their future at the position. It's still worth maintaining patience with some of the young guns, such as J.J. McCarthy and especially Cam Ward, but the bottom 13 or so is bleak. There are just not a lot of quality performances coming out of that group. Hopefully Jayden Daniels, CJ Stroud and Kyler Murray can return from injury sooner than later to at least weed out the longtime backups. God forbid if we need to rank Russell Wilson again next week, should Jaxson Dart miss time with his concussion.

That said, as the season enters its final stretch and the MVP race takes shape, here are all 32 quarterbacks in the NFL, ranked after Week 10.

Ranking all 32 NFL starting quarterbacks after Week 10

Drake Maye

What a season it has been for the New England Patriots. There's a reason Mike Vrabel was so well regarded in Tennessee, but not even the most optimistic New England fan would've predicted an 8-2 start with Drake Maye in the MVP conversation. This roster felt like an empty husk a year ago. Bill Belichick left the organization in a state of complete disarray. That Maye put up Pro Bowl numbers as a rookie under those conditions was clearly a more serious indicator of star potential than folks gave him credit for.

Maye threw for 270 yards and two touchdowns in a gutsy road win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Pats are now 5-0 away from home, exhibiting incredible poise in unfriendly environments. Rookie RB TreVeyon Henderson stole the spotlight on Sunday afternoon, but Maye's leap to superstardom has been the defining story of an incredible bounce-back campaign in Foxborough.

New England now has signature wins over Buffalo and Tampa — with an easy upcoming schedule paving the way for a run at the AFC East crown.

Mac Jones

Meanwhile in San Francisco, Mac Jones continues to apply pressure on the coaching staff and injured QB1 Brock Purdy. Jones threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns in a 42-26 loss to the Rams. L.A.'s offense tore through the Niners defense like swiss cheese, but this was only the latest standout performance from Jones. Once left for dead after Belichick's turbulent final chapter in New England, Jones is back in the national consciousness. If the Niners don't hand him the starting gig full-time, another team will next offseason.

Jones and Kyle Shanahan was always the dream team. Shanahan famously preferred Jones to No. 2 pick Trey Lance in the 2021 draft. The Niners' scheme and personnel is favorable for any quarterback, but Jones is moving the football in ways Purdy simply has not — at least not since the Niners' Super Bowl run in 2023. He looks in complete control out there, pushing advanced throws into traffic and avoiding the silly mistakes that defined his beleagured Patriots tenure. Jones didn't take a single sack against the Rams. He has 13 touchdowns to six interceptions on the season with an impressive 69.6 percent completion rate and 2,151 passing yards across eight starts.

It has to feel a bit bittersweet for New England fans to watch Jones find his second wind like this. It's a reminder of what could have been under better circumstances. Jones was in the Pro Bowl as a rookie. He looked great that first season, before Belichick systematically dismantled his confidence and undermined Jones with egregious personnel decisions.

Thankfully, Drake Maye is here for the long haul. Patriots fans certainly aren't complaining.

Aaron Rodgers

The Steelers need to have a difficult Aaron Rodgers conversation. Just a few precious weeks ago, Mike Tomlin was leaning back in his desk chair with a smile, smoking a pipe, laughing at the foolish majority who lampooned the Pittsburgh Steelers' decision to sign Aaron Rodgers. (This never happened, to be clear. At least, it was not documented.) After a Week 10 loss to fall to 5-4, however, all those preseason concerns — that Rodgers is too old, that this offense can't hold up over an 18-week season as constructed — are back in full force.

Rodgers threw two costly interceptions and took three sacks in Pittsburgh's Sunday night loss to the Chargers. That is a quality defense, to be fair, but Pittsburgh has lost three of its last four. The defense is the real culprit behind the Steelers' disappointment, but the seams are beginning to show as Rodgers strains to keep the Pittsburgh offense in gear.

We saw the offense spiral out in similar fashion a year ago under Russell Wilson's fearless command. This habit of hinging the offense upon past-prime, ex-champs who can no longer capture the magic of old is one the Steelers need to break next offseason. Rodgers has danced around the idea of playing another season, but if he does, it should not be in Pittsburgh. The Steelers need to find something sustainable — a foundation upon which to build the next generation.

Maybe that means firing Mike Tomlin. Maybe that just means having the hard conversations and coming the realization that Wilson, Rodgers and these overqualified, late-30s, early-40s veterans are available for a reason. So much of the NFL season is about durability. While pedigree and football IQ are valuable traits, you need a quarterback who can take a beating. A quarterback who can withstand weeks of wear and tear. Rodgers is not that quarterback.

Pittsburgh needs to ramp up the run game, improve the O-line, and add more pass-catching talent too. But the quarterback position remains a point of weakness. Rodgers isn't a bad QB, but he's not on the level necessary to sustain a contender. Not anymore. He still lands in the top-20, but that's due to an incredible dearth of established talent on the back half of this list — not because of what he's churning out on the football field every weekend.

Trevor Lawrence

Trevor Lawrence is stalling for the Jaguars (again...). the Jacksonville Jaguars' 36-29 loss to the Houston Texans does not adequately paint a portrait of just how middling that offense is. The defense and special teams supplied a touchdown each, keeping Jacksonville competitive as the defense bled points against Texans backup Davis Mills. But this game should raise alarm bells when it comes to Trevor Lawrence's status as Jacksonville's franchise QB.

Lawrence completed 13-of-23 passes for 158 yards, a touchdown and an interception. Just mediocre, which is far too often the best description of Lawrence's performance under center. The former No. 1 pick is in his his fifth season, in the early stages of a supermassive $275 million contract. It's unfair to say Lawrence has not improved since coming into the league — he's not the same quarterback who threw 17 interceptions as a rookie — but the amount of growth, at this point in his career, is worryingly minute.

Jacksonville has a winning record and a couple impressive clutch performances under its belt this season, but it feels like a facade. This is the NFL's 19th-ranked offense. After all Liam Coen did to elevate Baker Mayfield in Tampa, watching Lawrence struggle to optimize his immense physical gifts for a fifth straight season is immensely frustrating. This Jaguars offense just is not good enough to support a leaky defense, which ranks 23rd in yards allowed per game. The Jaguars will face the Chargers and the Colts (twice) in the next six weeks. Things could get dark fast.

Lawrence is too mistake-prone. He too often fails to deliver the simple checkdown throws that sustain a competent offense. The big plays are too few and far between. He's completing 59.5 percent of his passes this season. The long-awaited bump in accuracy is nowhere to be found. It doesn't matter how far you can throw it, how much velocity you can muster, if the football is a mile off-target. Jacksonville does not have the playmaking weapons necessary to cover for Lawrence's erraticism either.

He's still too talented to give up on at 26 years old, and that contract puts Jacksonville in a sticky spot. But if Lawrence can't step up to the plate sooner than later, the Jags front office will need to have very difficult deliberations in the offseason. Things are not looking great. Like Rodgers, his position on this list is bolstered by the abject incompetence of those below him — not by his own accomplishments.

Other quarterback notes from Week 10

• We are approaching panic territory with Michael Penix Jr. in Atlanta. It's still early, but he's already 25. Not exactly a spring chicken by "unproven second-year QB" standards. Penix is wildly inefficient right now. He doesn't provide much mobility or imrpov skill in the pocket and he's still extremely limited in which areas of the field he's comfortable attacking. Atlanta needs to overhaul the coaching staff to give Penix a real shot.
• Matthew Stafford is 37 and the man hasn't lost a step. It's almost borning how good he is. This Rams offense stands among the best in the NFL, capable of beating defenses with a variety of different looks. Sean McVay remains deep in his bag, with Stafford capable of making every throw and always two steps ahead of the defense mentally. He's a football genius and he deserves all the flowers.
• Tua Tagovailoa has looked... a little better. He's still turning the ball over, but Miami's win over Buffalo on Sunday, its second in three weeks, was an impressive statement from a team that appeared dead in the water a short while ago. Tagovailoa lacks the arm talent to really carry an offense that isn't perfectly calibrated around him, but with such a weak bottom tier of quarterbacks, he has earned a slight bump in these rankings. For now.
• Tyler Shough put together his best outing yet in New Orleans' impressive win over a sneakily feisty Panthers squad. It hasn't been the prettiest three-week stretch, but Shough completed 70.4 percent of his passes for 282 yards and two touchdowns in the win. He didn't commit a turnover after back-to-back games with an INT. That'll play, at the very least. But he's still not the Saints' long-term QB1.

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