How to Figure Out a Pass Percentage in Football

The pass percentage statistic in football measures the percentage of passes a player or team completes over a specified period of time, such as a single drive, a quarter, a game, a season or a career. Calculating the passing percentage allows you to compare the accuracy of different players, even though they many have thrown a different number of passes. However, the pass percentage does not take into consideration the number of passes dropped or thrown away intentionally in order to avoid sacks.

Instructions

    • 1

      Count the number of passes attempted and passes completed for the specified period of time. For example, if you wanted to calculate the passing percentage for a quarterback during one game, only count the passes attempted and completed for that game.

    • 2

      Divide the number of passes completed by the number of passes attempted. For example, if the quarterback threw 28 passes and completed 18, divide 18 by 28 to get about 0.6429.

    • 3

      Multiply the result by 100 to find the pass percentage. In this example, multiply 0.6429 by 100 gives a pass percentage of 64.29 percent for the game.