NFL quarterbacks in DND alignment chart for neutral, lawful, and evil

Let’s be real: sometimes, QB rankings can be a chore. Even as someone who did a top 10 QB list this summer, doing these lists is often a thankless task because in the NFL, everything outside of the top four is super fluid. QB5 could be QB11 for a three week stretch. Maybe QB15 plays like QB6 and then everything gets screwed up. Rankings are for the birds, we done with the rankings.

What’s really in is charting QBs based on their Dungeons and Dragons alignment! We did this exercise last year, but for those that are new, here’s a brief explanation: alignment in Dungeons and Dragons is the code for how your character acts. If you make a character that’s lawful good, they’ll be your typical example of a heroic character, choosing the good in the world every time and believing in the good of everyone involved. Popular examples are Captain America and Ned Stark from Game of Thrones. However, there’s also the chaotic evil, who wants to see the world burn and aren’t afraid to take lives to do it. The Joker is the perfect example here.

So, how does this relate to NFL quarterbacking? Well, we’re going to put QBs in these buckets based on a few categories:

• Film: I used film as the background for the placement on the chart, trying to mesh style of play and individual process with their statistics.
• PFF’s Big Time Throw and Turnover Worthy Play and their subsequent percentage metrics are great ways to get the chaos of every QB. They tell the story of a QB who is willing to take risks and get on the chaos side, but their success in that world can make them good, neutral or evil.
• Sack rate when pressured: Perhaps the best indicator of good or evil QB’ing, if you’re able to make good decisions and avoid disaster when the pressure is on, you get a boost in the good category. Because what is being good if not thriving and making good decisions in the face of pressure?
• Passes outside the pocket: when you roll out, you invite chaos into the game. Many young QBs get sorted into this realm, just because of how chaotic the college game is. But finding out the frequency of passes outside the pocket via Sports Information Solutions could help us decode who goes where.
• All rookies drafted in 2025 and JJ McCarthy begin in chaotic neutral, because every college QB is inherently chaotic.

Now that we’ve got the rules and breakdown sorted out, let’s get into the chart!

The Neutral Spectrum and NFL QBing

It feels like every QB in the NFL is in the neutral position, and it kind of makes sense. There’s a lot of fluidity between the elite QBs in the NFL, and I think that makes the distinction between them very interesting. So, allow me to shed some light on it:

The difference between chaotic good and lawful neutral is simple: the guys in chaotic good tend to lean closer to average in Turnover Worthy Plays and Sack Rate when pressured compared to their lawful neutral counterparts, who exist more to cook by the book and only lean closer to average or below average in one category. Going into this exercise, I thought Packers’ QB Jordan Love would be the example of chaotic good in the NFL. However, going and watching him play while also looking at some advanced stats, he only really slips up in Turnover Worthy Plays. He’s got an abnormally low sack rate, high big time throw rate and doesn’t really play outside the confines of the pocket. He’s the platonic ideal for what a throwback QB would be. Sam Darnold, however, leans more into the chaotic aspect of Love’s play. While Love avoids sacks at a high rate, Darnold tends to get scatterbrained under pressure, and turns the ball over. He’s the example of a chaotic good pocket passer. For some of these guys I took some liberties with looking at how they play vs the stats, because the film ultimately tells the story, but the entire NFL feeling about neutral is fitting.

The Existence of the Elite

When talking about the elite QBs in the NFL, you have to bring up three guys: Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, Buffalo’s Josh Allen and Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson (you can also bring Joe Burrow into this conversation, but for now we’re only talking about these three). These three QBs are such a force in the NFL because they can exist in the gray area between lawful and chaotic. To be neutral good in this situation is where you want to be, capable of turning on the big time throws and scrambles outside the pocket to help the team, but also able to slice and dice from the pocket, like the lawful good QBs do. Allen is a really fun case of a player going all the way from chaotic evil, to neutral good. He might be the only player that’ll ever be able to do that, an example of how unique Allen is.

The Kyler Murray Question

You wouldn’t think that the Arizona Cardinal’s signal caller would give me the most issues, but here we are! You would think that Murray would be a bit more neutral in his chaos, but when you look at the advanced stats for Murray, they would say one more of a chaotic good QB: tied for 10th in Big Time Throw Rate, tied for 32nd in Turnover Worthy Play Rate (which is good), average sack rate and average scramble rate. Then you watch him play, and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that Murray is a chaotic good QB who can drift into chaotic neutral far too often for my liking. His middle of the field work is ROUGH (because he is short, yes), which leads to some variance in his play, but he has everything a chaotic good QB needs to be a chaotic good QB. Maybe Murray will help bring some change to the criteria for the alignment chart, we’ll see.