Michigan vs. Nebraska - PFF Grading
After watching the game this weekend, and thought Michigan had an overall good game in all three phases.
Not according to Pro Football Focus, who levied it's lowest grade of the season: 81.7
They explain thier reasoning as to why but, it is 6:00 AM and I am too tired to provide a quick synopsis.
If you want to learn more, here is the MLive link:
Did not see it on the board and enjoy extended vacations in Bolivia, if that makes a difference.
Enjoy
October 2nd, 2023 at 6:29 AM ^
Didn't realize El-Hadi got 30 snaps during live action. Good to see low snap count for the d lineman in that heat. Mullings made his presence felt in 8 total plays.
October 2nd, 2023 at 6:53 AM ^
I've never fully understood how PFF works. From what I can gather from Brian and Seth, the UFR process is time-consuming and takes effort. So how can PFF do all the games so quickly? My guess is their process is not nearly so meticulous as UFR, and they have a wider team of people doing the work, so there's more variance in the scoring process. I guess; I really don't know.
October 2nd, 2023 at 7:16 AM ^
High throughput, low quality.
October 2nd, 2023 at 7:59 AM ^
IIRC, PFF basically asks “did this player do what was expected during the play?” with an EXPECTED score of 0
So executing a really tough concept, such as…idk…ANYTHING in the Michigan running game, is a 0 to PFF. If they even understand the concept in the first place.
October 2nd, 2023 at 9:38 AM ^
I recall someone mentioning that PFF has a large (30+) number of folks who help with the scoring in some capacity. Greater volume of folks leads to greater inconsistency between teams and even within a team from week to week unless the same person always does the same schools.
October 2nd, 2023 at 9:41 AM ^
I mean they have to grade every player in every play of every game and it comes out the next day. Can't be a lot of quality control going on. I picture bunch of recent college grads making next to nothing putting out these ratings.
October 2nd, 2023 at 1:26 PM ^
Obviously, there are problems with any sports grading methodology. The primary one for football being you don't know exactly what the individual responsibilities are for every player on every play. You can make fairly to even extremey educated guesses based on formation. You might even be right 90% of the time, but like you said, there are different people, so there are going to be variations in scores.
It's probably a somewhat useful tool for getting a snapshot of who is playing well and who is playing poorly, over the course of a season. IIRC, a lot of NFL teams use PFF, and they're probably doing that because they do find their grading helpful in one way or another.
I think the problem arises more so with how PFF (and the NFL) contextualizes PFF's data as well as how fans receive it.
PFF and the NFL use their grades to hype players to the moon and target fans to get them excited. Sports journalists/reporters will also do the same thing to rip on a player. X player who the fans have been hating had a terrible grade according to PFF. Now it isn't just an opinion or a feeling that you suck. There is a chart, with numbers. Charts and numbers are official. Charts and numbers don't lie (lol). People love charts and numbers. This is entertainment, after all.
The fans will just throw around random PFF grades, and only remember the good or the bad, and fail to follow up. Y player had a grade of 90.1 this week! It was hyped by my team's beat writer. The announcers talked about it all the next game. Other fans I talk to are excited, "Did you see Y? He's been a monster this year. Had the top graded week for his position!" Then the next few weeks he gets graded at an average score, and no one talks about it. If anything, they've moved on to Z player, who had an 88.9! Wow, he's going to be a star if he plays like that consistently. Player Y? I forgot about his scores or what's going on with him.
PFF tends to focus on the extremes (what generates eyeballs, clicks, and revenue). How many EDGEs are in the top 5 at this point? It seems like there are 20 top 5 EDGE rushers in the NFL. Which leads to another problem with PFF, which is data overload.
They (by design) have so many different stats and metrics they keep track of, so they can sell you just about any narrative you want to hear at any given time. Do you want us to hype your EDGE rusher to the moon? Well, he's got 0 sacks, but his "pass rush win rate" is super high. He is also getting a high degree of "pressures." Don't forget his block shedding win rate in the run game!
It's all just to drive conversation at the end of the day.
October 2nd, 2023 at 1:46 PM ^
I'm generally with you - Recruiting rankings are the same thing, a bunch of opinions that get thrown into a blender that spits out numbers and then gets treated as actual, measurable data.
However, I disagree on your second to last paragraph - sacks have a large element of randomness as they involve the reaction and actions of the QB - did they properly step up or walk into a sack, do they get rid of the ball as soon as they are in trouble or hold on too long, etc. A guy with a big pass rush win rate will likely eventually get their share of sacks, but the game to game variance will almost always be high.
Hutch "only" had 3 sacks in 2021 against OSU, but the 17 or whatever insane number of pressures he was credited with felt like a much better measure of his play. Stroud was definitely getting the ball out quickly on most of the snaps, making sacks on those plays nearly impossible.
October 2nd, 2023 at 11:33 PM ^
I'm not arguing against the validity of any one stat. Pressures are important. I am simply talking about the context in which they are used.
I just found a perfect example just now. PFF puts out a fancy looking graphic that says, "Fewest Pressures Allowed" and has Tristian Wirfs, Penei Sewell, and Trent Williams, being used to hype those 3 guys as the best tackles in the game. Then when you look at Penei Sewell's actual PFF pass blocking grades for the season they are only solid (typically in the 70s) and far below the other 2 guys. So which is it? Is he top 3, or above average? Whatever it needs to be to build hype.
October 2nd, 2023 at 2:12 PM ^
I always wondered how many people they have on staff. For the NFL I get it, maybe you have 15 guys doing 2 teams a weekend, and you can spread it out as games are on Thu/Sun/Mon. But CFB ? Unless they are only looking at 30-35 teams they have to be staffed near 75+ for anything of quality. At most you could break down 2 games if you really spent a lot of time on it. How do you grade 11 guys on EVERY play if you watch more than 2 games. Every play would take a few rewinds. But it's taken as gospel when it's probably 12 guys.
On top of that UFR is the same guy watching the same team week in and week out so knows the tendencies quirks and the team's philosophy on offense and defense and tendencies etc. Vs a random guy watching a team once or twice a season in CFB.
October 2nd, 2023 at 7:21 AM ^
I continue to Not Get lots of aspects of PFF. Oh well
Did Hinton get injured? If not I think the coaches may have been planning to get him as much game experience as possible and redshirt him. That would actually make sense given the weird line configuration in non-conference, and why it switched so suddenly to Henderson at LT and Barnhart to RT
October 2nd, 2023 at 8:00 AM ^
Harbaugh did say last week that Hinton was working through something but he didn't sound concerned that it was serious
October 2nd, 2023 at 8:40 AM ^
Hinton was on the pregame injury report as questionable, so not a big surprise that he sat out.
October 2nd, 2023 at 11:57 AM ^
Hmm, I must have missed that.
Well, here's hoping he gets Pipp'd by Henderson and he can have an extra year to work on stuff and earn the starting job next year
October 2nd, 2023 at 7:59 AM ^
Sainristil only played 16 snaps? Does anyone know why? Was it just because it was a beatdown in 90+ degree heat?
October 2nd, 2023 at 8:11 AM ^
He recovered the onside kick try so he was ok at that point of the game. Probably just the backups getting a lot of run.
October 2nd, 2023 at 8:14 AM ^
He came out before the final drive the week prior against Rutgers and went into the medical tent. Was walking with a slight limp after the game, but no one really noticed. Could be lingering from that, not sure. Doesn't seem serious since he played. I didn't see him pick up anything against Nebraska but could've missed it.
October 2nd, 2023 at 12:29 PM ^
They ran something like 20 plays in the first half. So wouldn’t surprise me if he just didn’t come out for the 2nd half and sat a bit earlier than most of the first team
October 2nd, 2023 at 1:26 PM ^
He's dealing with something.
October 2nd, 2023 at 8:49 AM ^
I don't buy it. I'm definitely not a trained football analyst, but I've seen a lot of Michigan football and that was as comprehensive an ass-whooping as I've seen. It just felt so utterly complete.
October 2nd, 2023 at 9:00 AM ^
yeah that's about as close to perfect as a football game can get
October 2nd, 2023 at 9:13 AM ^
I'd probably just chalk it up to the game to game variability PFF can have as compared to its grades over an entire season. Felt like their best game of the season watching it on TV.
October 2nd, 2023 at 10:47 AM ^
There are times when I try to figure out PFF grading and think PFFT.
October 2nd, 2023 at 12:46 PM ^
Title of the OP is massively misleading. The MLive article only gives out two individual grades.
If you want to see all the grades in a publicly accessible article you can find them here:
October 2nd, 2023 at 12:58 PM ^
While 81.7 might be the worst PFF score of the season, that's still a pretty damn good score--about 17 points above the PFF average. Also, there are some reasons for to make a case for the Nebraska score being lower.
For one, Nebraska gained the most yards on M of any opponent this season. And while Nebraska only scored 7 points in the game, had they settled for sad FGs they probably could have scored 10 or 13, which would have been the most point surrendered in a game yet this season. First world problems yes, but hey.
Also, according to the article, the low grades went to a couple players in the secondary--which seems plausible as the secondary did give up a few big plays--and a couple OL who allowed QB pressures. I know the PFF scores can be questionable, especially for OL, but that doesn't strike me as completely unreasonable.
A third reason is that M had depth players in the game pretty early. So the scores could have been more heavily influenced by inexperienced guys making inconsequential mistakes.
October 2nd, 2023 at 1:33 PM ^
At this point a lot of this is very nit picky. But the plays happened.. The yds though, including the 1st 2 plays listed, 200yds in the 1st three qtrs including most all the 3rd with backups.. the last 100yds in the 4th with so many backups that never see the field.
Nebraska hit 3 big plays this game, 2nd drive, 34yd pass play to the Michigan 21, the series was the best series of the game for Nebraska but they went for it on 4th and 1 and got stuffed, turnover on downs. This was the only drive when the game was relatively close, but Nebraska was already down 14-0.
Next is the 56yd pass 1st drive of the 2nd half for Nebraska, hit the pass got the yds and subsequently lose 3yds on the ensuing plays to miss the fg. This one shouldn't have happened again. And isn't the only play where a nebraska rec got open and some space.
TD run 70something yards against mostly 2nd and 3rd team players. You mentioned this in your post but by this drive there were many many backups that never see the field. A few 2nd teamers that shouldn't have allowed it but still.
Go Blue..
October 2nd, 2023 at 2:10 PM ^
Like weight gain and loss, all PFF scores that favor us are good and show how well run PFF is, and all PFF scores that do not, mean they don't have a clue and are basically a meaningless data point.
October 3rd, 2023 at 2:33 PM ^
I would guess PFF is probably pretty accurate on this. (UFR is better of course)
But we have to admit we watch JJ rolling out to the left and throwing across his body for a touchdown, and we say wow what a great play. We're really happy with that. But grade every player, and pff says well this O line collapsed to a bunch of 3 star nobodies, and wilson was the only one who got open after a few seconds, so + grade for Wilson and McCarthy and possibly - grades for everyone else on that play.
I felt great after that game, but I can't really argue with a team of professionals that sat down and watched every player on every play and concluded it was the least well-played game of the season for us. (My understanding is that 81.7 is still very good.)