http://www.espn.com/nfl/insider/story/_ ... hlisberger
Here's an explanation of how it works:
Bridgewater was ranked in Tier 3, at #23, the same spot he held last year.The voting panel for our third annual NFL QB Tier Rankings consisted of 42 league insiders -- 10 general managers, five head coaches, seven offensive coordinators, five defensive coordinators, eight personnel evaluators and seven other position coaches/executives.
I polled coaches and evaluators on 33 QBs, asking them to place each player into one of five tiers, with Tier 1 reserved for the very best and Tier 5 reserved for the very worst:
Tier 1: Can carry his team each week. Team wins because of him.
Tier 2: Can carry team sometimes but not as consistently.
Tier 3: Legit starter but needs heavy run game/defense to win.
Tier 4: Might not want this guy starting all 16 games.
Tier 5: Do not think this guy should be starting.
In the end, we averaged the tier rankings for each quarterback to produce a 1-33 ranking across four tiers (no starting QBs received enough Tier 5 votes to fall into the fifth tier), and gave the insiders anonymity so they could speak candidly.
Judd Zulgad has written an article about how Bridgewater fared in the rankings:
http://www.1500espn.com/vikings-2/2016/ ... -rankings/
The Strib's Michael Rand also writes about it here:
http://www.startribune.com/another-rank ... 389617281/
Rand makes a good point:
Again, this is nothing that hasn’t been written or said before. And ultimately, as noted already, what the Vikings think carries far more weight. That said, how other teams perceive Bridgewater is indicative of how defenses will game-plan against the Vikings this season. And you could also argue that how he is viewed by other teams is reasonably objective.