CFB Savant

Yards Per Attempt Beats Raw Yards. The 2026 QB Board Proves It.

Braden Atkinson leads the nation in passing yards. He is not the most efficient quarterback. That gap is the whole point of percentiles. By CFB Savant · October 13, 2026 · Numbers as of the Oct 13, 2026 snapshot.

Braden Atkinson leads all qualified FBS passers with 2,236 passing yards. Jayden Maiava is second with 2,045. Tayven Jackson is third with 1,859. If you only looked at yardage totals, you would call Atkinson the best passing quarterback in the country.

CFB Savant does not only look at yardage totals. Atkinson’s passer rating is 178.7, which is excellent — well above the median rating of 140.9 — but it is not first. Darian Mensah leads at 212.2. Josh Hoover is second at 200.5. Gunner Stockton is third at 198.6. Julian Sayin is fourth at 194.4. Atkinson’s yardage lead does not translate into an efficiency lead, and the reason is yards per attempt.

YPA is the separator

Yards per attempt divides passing yards by attempts, including incompletions and interceptions. It is the cleanest single measure of downfield passing efficiency. The median qualified quarterback in this snapshot averages 7.72 YPA. Here is how the volume leaders compare:

Atkinson has thrown 234 passes, far more than Mensah’s 133 or Sayin’s 163. More attempts produce more yards, even at a lower per-attempt rate. That is not a knock on Atkinson. It is a description of how he produces. He is a high-volume passer on a team that throws a lot, and he is doing it efficiently enough to rank highly. But his per-throw efficiency is a full yard below Sayin and Mensah, and over hundreds of attempts, a yard per attempt is a huge gap.

Completion percentage without YPA lies

Completion percentage alone can mislead. A quarterback who completes 75% of passes at 6.0 YPA is not better than one who completes 63% at 10.0 YPA. The first is completing short throws. The second is creating yardage.

Mensah breaks the usual tradeoff. He completes 84.2% of passes at 10.81 YPA. That is not a check-down profile. It is a downfield profile with elite accuracy. Sayin is the other side of the same coin: 71.2% completions at 10.87 YPA, with 15.28 yards per completion — the highest among the top group. When Sayin completes a pass, it goes a long way.

Atkinson completes 70.5% at 9.56 YPA. Maiava completes 67.9% at 9.13 YPA. Both are good. Neither is in the Mensah/Sayin tier on per-attempt efficiency. Their yardage totals are higher because they have thrown more, not because each throw is more valuable.

Why adjusted yards per attempt matters too

Adjusted yards per attempt (AYA) adds a bonus for touchdowns and a penalty for interceptions: (Yards + 20 × TD − 45 × INT) ÷ Attempts. It answers the question YPA leaves open: were those yards actually valuable?

Mensah’s AYA is 13.07, the highest among the top group, because he has 15 touchdowns and 0 interceptions. Hoover’s AYA is 13.21, actually slightly higher than Mensah’s, because Hoover has 17 touchdowns and 0 interceptions on fewer yards. Sayin’s AYA is 12.40, with 17 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. Atkinson’s AYA is 10.97, with 21 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. The ordering shifts slightly when touchdowns and interceptions are priced in, but the top tier stays the same: Mensah, Hoover, Sayin, and Stockton, not the yardage leaders.

The median quarterback is the baseline

It helps to know what average looks like. The median qualified quarterback in this snapshot has a rating of 140.9, averages 7.72 yards per attempt, and has 1,095 passing yards. Atkinson at 178.7 rating and 9.56 YPA is well above that median on every measure. He is not an average quarterback who happens to throw a lot. He is a very good quarterback having a high-volume season. The point is not that Atkinson is overrated. It is that Mensah and Sayin are operating on a different tier of per-attempt efficiency, and the yardage totals hide that gap if you do not look at YPA.

The same logic applies to Maiava. His 2,045 yards are second in the country, but his 9.13 YPA and 168.4 rating are a step below Atkinson, and two steps below Mensah. Volume gets you into the conversation. Efficiency wins it. That is why CFB Savant shows percentiles for both volume and efficiency, side by side, instead of ranking quarterbacks by yards alone.

How to use this

When you open a quarterback card on CFB Savant, do not start with yards. Start with YPA, AYA, and rating together. If all three percentiles are high, the quarterback is efficient and productive. If yards percentile is high but YPA percentile is middling, the quarterback is a volume producer. If YPA percentile is high but yards percentile is low, the quarterback is efficient on limited volume — maybe a backup who became a starter, or a starter on a run-heavy team.

Atkinson is the classic case. His yards percentile is 100th — literally no one has more yards. His YPA percentile is still very high, but not 100th. His rating percentile is high, but not 100th. He is an excellent quarterback having a huge-volume season. Mensah and Sayin are more efficient per throw. That distinction is exactly what percentiles are for. See the YPA glossary entry and the 2026 QB leaderboard.