This was not a good week to be a rookie quarterback. Josh Allen was on the sidelines due to an injured elbow, and he may have had the best week of any of the top rookie passers.

Josh Rosen was a disaster on Thursday night, as he threw two picks six as his Cardinals were destroyed, 45-10. Even ignoring that two of his three interceptions were returned for touchdowns, Rosen finished with a 0.87 ANY/A average, the worst of any quarterback in week seven.

Sam Darnold was not much better. The Jets had six drives in the second quarter, and picked up zero first downs. For the game, Darnold finished with 45 dropbacks and threw for just 7 first downs, and his 16% passing first down rate was the worst of any quarterback in week seven.

Baker Mayfield was only slightly better: the Browns seven first half drives ended in six straight punts and a turnover on downs when Cleveland took possession at the Tampa Bay 19-yard line. Cleveland had 6 three-and-outs, and the Browns picked up a first down on just 21% of all passing plays: third-worst of the week, ahead of only the Cardinals and Jets.

The top passers this week were Rivers and Mahomes, who have separated themselves as the top two quarterbacks in the AFC this season. The full week 7 passing stats below. On average this week, teams completed 22.1 of 34.0 passes, for 247.4 gross passing yards, with a 93.4 passer rating.

Let’s take a moment to look at Cam Newton, who had a remarkable performance in week seven. On his first 18 dropbacks, he went 8/16 for 59 pass yards with just 3 first downs, 0 TDs, 2 sacks, and -19 sack yards; he averaged 2.22 ANY/A. Meanwhile, his final 23 dropbacks went like this: 17/23, 210 pass yards, 10 first downs, 2 TDs, 0 sacks, 10.87 ANY/A.

The graph below shows every Newton pass, sack, and rushing attempt against the Eagles. The X-Axis shows time elapsed in the game; the Y-Axis shows the adjusted net yards gained by Newton on each play; the size of each dot represents the scoring differential in the game (small dots for when the Panthers were down big, medium sized dots for when the game was close; there are no large dots, because Newton didn’t take any snaps while leading except for a final kneel down.)

Cam and the Panthers didn’t do much for three quarters, before turning it on for the final 15 minutes:

Finally, here are the season-to-date passing stats. With one exception, the top of this list does a pretty good job of identifying the lead horses in the MVP race. That exception is for Ryan, whose Falcons are 3-4 and have lost two games where the team has scored 36+ points, is probably a distant candidate in the MVP race. But Ryan is not too far off his scorched-earth pace from 2016, when he won MVP. And while the order is different, the five offenses with the best success rate (scores per drive) this year are, in order, New Orleans, Kansas City, Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Chargers, Atlanta.

At this point, I wouldn’t split hairs over remarkable numbers vs. otherworldly numbers. The big question will be which quarterbacks can maintain their ridiculous pace.