Announcing: Major Scientific Breakthrough

Achieved by -- naturally -- Peter King.
King's new column contains the ranking of 32 NFL QBs. What formula does he use to measure these QBs, you might ask?

As for how I arrived at my picks, other than with a divining rod, I used a few measuring sticks. I value wins from my quarterback, which helped Manning and Brady, the leaders in victories over the last two years.

Fair.

I value postseason success; their seven combined wins over the past two years is significant.

Sure. I mean, it's more significant than wins by a pitcher.

Completion percentage and yards-per-attempt are the two passing stats I value the most because they tell you how often a quarterback succeeds in efficiently moving the chains through the air.

This seems good. I might toss in that weird QB Rating thing even though it is impenetrably dense and weird, but COMP% and YPA seems decent. What else?

Finally, intangibles.

Intangibles. You made a statistic...out of intangibles. You turned "intangibles" into a tangible.

Brady led all passers with a 10 on a 10-point scale, because he's a coach, an offseason facilitator, a free-agent recruiter -- and he does it while retaining respect from the guys he often has to lean on hard.

And that is worth: 10 intangi-points.

I've been crunching the numbers on some other people and how they rate on King's tangible intangible scale:

Dan Marino: 6.8. Surprisingly low total for an all-time great, but remember: he couldn't win the big one (-1.4); and he had weird curly hair that failed to inspire greatness in teammates (-.8).

Don Mattingly: 8.1. Mattingly gets a boost from winning an MVP at a time when the Yankees weren't very good (+1.2), and wearing the pinstripes with pride (+2.5). He is docked, however, 0.1 for being lefthanded, which is a weird quirk of the King Intangibles Scale.

Phil Spector: 9.5. This one surprised me. Spector gets mad intangipoints for creating a famous production style, the so-called "Wall of Sound" (+3.3). He also gets a boost from having a distinctive aura (+1.1) and being super skinny (+1.7). Also, I naturally assumed he would be docked something for being on trial for murder, but interestingly, that is not the case.

Prince Fielder: 2.0. I thought I'd run the numbers on a young guy just for kicks, and the results were pretty much as I expected. Fielder's youth hurt him. He did get +1.0 for being the son of a relatively famous MLBer, and a +.5 for being fat in a "lovable" way. But he plays for a small-market team (-2.0 in baseball, -0.3 in football, +4.0, weirdly, in hockey) and is left-handed...there's a lot of negatives there.

Prince, the Singer: 10.0. Perfectly intangible.