My opinion of their opinion: Breaking down the Steelers PFF scores from Preseason Week 2

A couple seasons ago, I decided to switch up how I report the grades by Pro Football Focus (PFF) because of my frustration due to the absurdity of their findings. Instead of listing out all the scores, I gave highlights of some of the highs and lows and whether or not I thought their grading passed my own eye test. Since it seemed to be the most receptive approach, I decided to make this a weekly thing where I give my opinion of the PFF scores.

As always has to be the case when PFF is mentioned, the disclaimer is these grades are subjective and merely the opinion of those doing the evaluation. While PFF looks at every player on every snap, they are still simply forming an opinion of what they believe that player was supposed to be doing that play in order to determine if they were successful or not.

So here are my overall impressions of the scores from the Steelers Preseason Week 2 loss to the Buccaneers with my grade of PFF at the end.

Offense

For the second straight week, Scotty Miller comes away with the top PFF grade with an 81.9 overall. Miller had a team-high passing grade of 79.0. There were three other players on the offense who scored above a 70 in Roman Wilson (76.4), Roc Taylor (75.7), and Kaleb Johnson (72.9).

When it came to the bottom scores, Logan Woodside only had a 32.9 overall based on a 33.6 passing score. The other overall score in the 30s belonged to Gareth Warren who had a 34.3 overall. Interesting enough, Warren had a 76.1 pass blocking score, which was 13 of his 22 snaps, but a 40.4 run blocking score on his other nine snaps. One of the bigger things that had him at the bottom was having two penalties called against him in the game. Both of them came in the final two minutes of the first half in a false start and a holding penalty.

There were seven offensive players who scored in the 40s for the Steelers in Max Hurleman (42.3), Steven Jones (45.2), Broderick Jones (45.4), Lance McCutcheon (46.3), Kevin Foelsch (47.7), Max Sharping (48.3), and Darnell Washington (48.9).

When it came to the passing scores, the top three overall scores were also the top three in this category. After Scotty Miller was Roman Wilson (75.2) and Roc Taylor (73.8). Mason Rudolph was the only other player above a 70 with a 71.4.

Pass blocking saw a lot of quality grades with three players scoring in the 80s in Andrus Peat (85.4), Dylan Cook (83.5), and Mason McCormick (80.8). As for run blocking, only two players scored in the 70s in wide receiver Robert Woods (78.1) and tackle Doug Nestor (73.0).

Kaleb Johnson had the top running score of 75.5. Despite having a 14.0 yard per carry average, Lew Nichols only managed to score a 66.9 running score just ahead of Kenneth Gainwell’s 66.0 who only had two yards on two carries.

Defense

The top score on defense this week belonged to a player that only played three snaps. Nick Herbig had a 90.0 overall score based on an 87.6 pass rushing score which was his only individual score given. In those three snaps, Herbig had one quarterback hurry. What I found interesting was Payton Wilson only had one pass rush snap which also resulted in a quarterback hurry but his pass rush score was only 66.0.

Not far behind Herbig’s overall score were Keeanu Benton with an 89.6 and Cole Holcomb with an 89.1. Benton’s score came from quality scores in all the individual areas while Cole Holcomb had the top run defense score of 86.2 as well as as a solid coverage score of 74.2.

There were three more players on defense who scored in the 80s overall. They included D’Shawn Jamison (85.8), Beanie Bishop (85.3), and Miles Killebrew (84.1). Just missing out were Kyler Baugh with a 79.9 and Breiden Fehoko with a 79.5.

Looking at the scores at the bottom, Daniel Ekuale only had a 30.3 overall based on a 33.2 run defense score. There were six players who scored in the 40s in Mikey Victor (45.0), Mark Robinson (45.1), Quindell Johnson (45.3), Devon Harper (45.7), Payton Wilson (47.7), and Juan Thornhill (48.6). Both Wilson and Thornhill had lower scores because of 36.6 and 43.6 coverage scores respectively. Interesting enough, Thornhill was not even targeted yet had a very low coverage score.

When it came to run defense, Cole Holcomb was followed by Keeanu Benton with an 80.3 run defense score. Other quality scores included Breiden Fehoko (77.4), Malik Harrison (76.9), DeMarvin Leal (76.3), and Eku Leota (75.1).

The top tackling score in the game belonged to Sebastian Castro with an 83.4 followed by Quindell Johnston and Juan Thornhill both with a 79.1. When it came to the pass rushing scores, there was a big drop off from Nick Herbig down to Keeanu Benton at 71.0 followed by Peyton Wilson at 66.0. In coverage, Beanie Bishop had the top score of 87.3 followed by D’Shawn Jamison at 84.2.

Special Teams

Since it is a key component of some of these players making the 53-man roster, I’m going to include the scores from special teams. Those who stood out the most and had scores over 70 were Lew Nichols (81.4), Jack Sawyer (80.6), Brandon Johnson (76.1), and Trey Sermon (75.4).

Overall

I might have some problems comparing these scores to my eye test. Just before the game Saturday night, I re-watched the first half of the Steelers game against the Jaguars. In some cases some things might be running together. For example, I thought I saw Beanie Bishop letting a guy get behind him who would have had a touchdown if the quarterback got the ball far enough, but instead Bishop was able to catch up. I can’t remember if that was from Week 1 or Week 2. If it was from Week 2, then the coverage score by Bishop would be very surprising.

I thought the pass rushing scores seemed a little bit odd. Sometimes it feels like PFF keeps in some scores from previous years during the preseason to kind of get an idea of where a player should be. I know Nick Herbig almost got a sack on one play, but I was surprised to see his score that high.

Also, although he had a decent score of 68.8 overall, I expected a higher grade for Derrick Harmon. I was surprised that the only player who got a sack in the game only had a 60.7 pass rush score.

On offense, I was surprised that the run blocking scores were still very low despite the running game getting going. I don’t get how Lew Nichols could have a mediocre running score and the players blocking for him having below average run blocking scores. How did he manage to run the ball so well in his three carries?

Also, the lowest pass blocking scores were Caleb Johnson and Trey Sermon. I didn’t see them stand out in that bad of a way, but I don’t trust PFF pass blocking scores for running backs.

On a completely side note, I do find it interesting that one of the higher graded players on offense in Roc Taylor, along with one of the higher graded players on defense in Breiden Fehoko, were both released by the Steelers on Monday.

In all, I don’t really trust these grades this week. It’s not that they were completely awful, there just doesn’t seem to be something right about them.

My grade of this week’s PFF scores: D