PFF Grades for Week 3 @ NE

[outlaw4]

I want to know how one gets a zero in pass blocking. Also, my god, what is the deal with our linebackers? Our backups from our past rosters would be better than these guys.

 

[mrcompletely11]

11 minutes ago, Jay Roosevelt said:

Are the two things mutually exclusive? Bryce has been bad. Stroud hasn't been much better since his rookie year. Richardson is a bust. The answer to the QB question in 2023, it turns out, was: none of the above.

stroud hasnt been much better then bryce?  come on man

[mrcompletely11]

20 minutes ago, Icege said:

I don't think the team is in a good enough place to drop a rookie QB in. Best case scenario imo, they further build the roster during the offseason and march the team to a top-10 pick behind Bryce in the last year of his deal. If we're picking in the top-10 again, it means Canales isn't the offensive-mind that Tepper thought he was. Grab a reliable vet if there's one available and let the new rookie sit for a year.

 

except it doesnt work like that, like at all, the giants tried it and it blew up in their face.  There are only 3 options for bryce after this season and him simply playing on his 4rth year deal isnt one

[mrcompletely11]

6 minutes ago, frankw said:

He certainly seemed to have no problem "demonizing" CJ Stroud.

And guess what, stroud had a good game yesterday

[CRA]

23 minutes ago, Icege said:

You still think I care about folks "picking" on Bryce when I've already clarified that it's because when trying to discuss anything not related to Bryce you and others like you come in with a boner to exclusively talk about Bryce.

I would wager 98% of the back and forth you have engaged in with "Bryce haters" has been in very Bryce specific threads about him, the offense, or during a literal game in which he is playing. 

 

[dep]

You guys argue too much.

 

The facts are we're ass, Bryce Young is pretty ass and Tepper sucks ass. 

[Bear Hands]

2 hours ago, Icege said:

Some fans are going to believe PFF this week (or try to cope with, "even PFF could see how bad Bryce was!!!").

Don't throw out the bait and complain about the biting.  

 

 

[Waldo]

44 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

I'm not at all opposed to having number crunchers on staff but it just needs to be part of the overall process. My concern with Tepper is that with his background outside of football and the comments he's made in the past about analytics I think he might be prone to putting way too much stick into the number crunching. I get it, everyone is looking for ways to draft better because it's a crap shoot in a lot of ways and there's busts and steals in every draft class but you're never coming up with a perfect formula and PFF seems to have a bad habit of instead of acknowledging misses and trying to tweak their system they'll just resort to mental gymnastics and try to convince people that their eyes were lying and that guy who played like ass was actually pretty good 

I have no problem with number crunches or being a part of the process but I do with brining in PFF people and running their gospel. Like you said, for a flawed system they pretend it's never them. Well BS. And Tepper is absolutely on their crotch because we just drafted by them while building another easy picking top 10 team again. 

Edited 2 hours ago by Waldo

[LinvilleGorge]

15 minutes ago, Waldo said:

I have no problem with number crunches or being a part of the process but I do with brining in PFF people and running their gospel. Like you said, for a flawed system they pretend it's never them. Well BS. And Tepper is absolutely on their crotch because we just drafted by them while building another easy picking top 10 team again. 

I'm not deeply familiar with their system but it seems to me that they likely treat every play equally. Oh, that was a positive play. Sir, it was more than a run of the mill positive play. It was a jaw dropping game winning TD. You can't treat that play as the equal of a random 2nd down play in the 1st half where you made the wrong read and it resulted in an incomplete pass. Less drastic, there's just a difference in importance to say 2nd and 4 in a game you're up two scores and 3rd and 8 when you're trailing. There has to be something in the formula to account for weighting of plays and it's something that's going to take some trial and error and you're probably never going to stop tweaking with it to fine tune it. I think that's where a lot of the PFF scores feel off. You'll watch a game and a guy will have a handful of very impactful plays but not otherwise particularly stand out and PFF will grade him negatively but did he really have a bad game? He wasn't "bad" otherwise and he made a handful of key plays. I think every football person would grade that overall positively. Same thing on the flipside. A guy was pretty decent overall but had a handful of absolutely terrible reps that led to negative consequences in the game. Despite being overall decent most football people would agree that the bad outweighed the good and that should result in an overall negative grade where it seems like PFF would tend to grade that performance positively.

I also wonder if they take into account situational football. Let's say it's that 2nd and 4. Overall the offense has been struggling a bit and we haven't been able to get any chunk plays and the D is really crowding the line. Tremble is open on a drag underneath that would likely move the chains but T-Mac is running a go down the sideline and he's one on one. You take the shot. It falls incomplete. I suspect PFF would grade that negatively where I'd honestly be neutral on it. Yeah, hitting Tremble likely moves the chains but we still have 3rd and 4 coming up with a decent chance to convert (we're pretending we have a real QB here, bear with me LOL). That shot to T-Mac was a good opportunity and it makes the D respect that you can threaten them vertically. I'm okay with it in the context of the game as outlined. I'm just not a big fan of going through a game and grading play by play on a stand alone basis. You have to consider the context of the game.

[CRA]

58 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

I'm not at all opposed to having number crunchers on staff but it just needs to be part of the overall process. My concern with Tepper is that with his background outside of football and the comments he's made in the past about analytics I think he might be prone to putting way too much stick into the number crunching. I get it, everyone is looking for ways to draft better because it's a crap shoot in a lot of ways and there's busts and steals in every draft class but you're never coming up with a perfect formula and PFF seems to have a bad habit of instead of acknowledging misses and trying to tweak their system they'll just resort to mental gymnastics and try to convince people that their eyes were lying and that guy who played like ass was actually pretty good 

you can dive deep enough into analytics where it will lie and you can find whatever you want to find. 

[Waldo]

2 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

I'm not deeply familiar with their system but it seems to me that they likely treat every play equally. Oh, that was a positive play. Sir, it was more than a run of the mill positive play. It was a jaw dropping game winning TD. You can't treat that play as the equal of a random 2nd down play in the 1st half where you made the wrong read and it resulted in an incomplete pass. Less drastic, there's just a difference in importance to say 2nd and 4 in a game you're up two scores and 3rd and 8 when you're trailing. There has to be something in the formula to account for weighting of plays and it's something that's going to take some trial and error and you're probably never going to stop tweaking with it to fine tune it. I think that's where a lot of the PFF scores feel off. You'll watch a game and a guy will have a handful of very impactful plays but not otherwise particularly stand out and PFF will grade him negatively but did he really have a bad game? He wasn't "bad" otherwise and he made a handful of key plays. I think every football person would grade that overall positively. Same thing on the flipside. A guy was pretty decent overall but had a handful of absolutely terrible reps that led to negative consequences in the game. Despite being overall decent most football people would agree that the bad outweighed the good and that should result in an overall negative grade where it seems like PFF would tend to grade that performance positively.

Everything I have seem with them is about hiding subjective interpretation behind layers of stats to hide what they really are based on. If it was just stats then we could all do what they do based off of box scores stats and such. That's their magic in their equation, subjective input delivered as fact. 

[LinvilleGorge]

 

10 minutes ago, Waldo said:

Everything I have seem with them is about hiding subjective interpretation behind layers of stats to hide what they really are based on. If it was just stats then we could all do what they do based off of box scores stats and such. That's their magic in their equation, subjective input delivered as fact. 

You just nailed a big issue I have with PFF. They act like their grades are completely objective when in reality they're based on the opinion of the person grading the play. Like in the situation I outlined above. I can see why one person might grade that incomplete pass to T-Mac one on one deep negatively when you had Tremble open underneath. A lot of that depends on the offensive mindset of the team. Are we a conservative offense leaning on defense or are we a team that wants to be aggressive on offense? If the former, that play should probably grade negatively because that offense is looking to control the clock and methodically advance the ball. If the latter, that OC and HC probably applauds taking that shot counting on still being able to convert and move the chains on 3rd and 4. They'll value the opportunity for the big chunk over the safe play in that situation.

They're also assuming they know the play call and the read. Was that missed throw and actual miss or did the receiver make his cut two yards deeper than he was supposed to? Did that DB blow the coverage or was he playing his correct role and someone else screwed it up? Yeah, that receiver was open early but he was the 3rd read in the progression. A lot of these situations the only person who objectively know the answer is the play caller and the outside observer is forced to work off of assumption.

[Waldo]

1 minute ago, LinvilleGorge said:

 

You just nailed a big issue I have with PFF. They act like their grades are objective when in reality they're based on the opinion of the person grading the play. Like in the situation I outlined above. I can see why one person might grade that incomplete pass to T-Mac one on one deep negatively when you had Tremble open underneath. A lot of that depends on the offensive mindset of the team. Are we a conservative offense leaning on defense or are we a team that wants to be aggressive on offense? If the former, that play should probably grade negatively because that offense is looking to control the clock and methodically advance the ball. If the latter, that OC and HC probably applauds taking that shot counting on still being able to convert and move the chains on 3rd and 4. They'll value the opportunity for the big chunk over the safe play in that situation.

There are so few official stats in football. The rest are subjective and debatable, it'snever going to be baseball because there are too many moving parts every play. PFF makes money off selling the certainty that their stuff is trustable and usable. First betting or fantasy and now they are targeting teams. You don't bring that in house unless you are a sucker or lost objectivity IMO. 

[LinvilleGorge]

6 minutes ago, Waldo said:

There are so few official stats in football. The rest are subjective and debatable, it'snever going to be baseball because there are too many moving parts every play. PFF makes money off selling the certainty that their stuff is trustable and usable. First betting or fantasy and now they are targeting teams. You don't bring that in house unless you are a sucker or lost objectivity IMO. 

In house analytics are probably the only ones that should actually matter because that analyst can work hand in hand with the coaches breaking down the film. I like PFF as a statistical aggregator much more than I rely on their grades. Their grades tell me the opinion of PFF and how their accumulative play by play grading system viewed that game, season, whatever. The bigger the data set the more useful that grade is going to be but it's always going to be flawed. It'll give you a very high level overall idea, that's about it. If a guy grades really well in coverage for the season he probably is a really good coverage guy and vice versa. They can basically tell you if a guy is really good or really sucks and then there's a ton of gray in the middle and you have to figure out how that guy is going to translate in the role you have in mind. For instance, you don't want to sign Moehrig planning on primarily using him as a deep FS.