Last season 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.

Now that the season is over, it’s time to look at the scores for the entire year. Since it will take more to break down, I will split up offense and defense into different articles. After looking at the offensive scores yesterday, here are my overall impressions of the defensive scores for the Steelers 2024 season with my grade of PFF at the end.

Note: The grades include all of the regular season as well as the postseason.

Defense

The Steelers defense had a much wider range of scores than the offense. There were two players who finished the season with overall scores in the 90s. T.J. Watt lead the Steelers with a 91.7 overall score. Watt scored in the 90s in two categories with a 90.3 run defense grade, second on the team only to Elandon Roberts, and a 90.1 pass rushing grade, second on the team only to Nick Herbig. Watt was brought down by a 70.0 coverage score and a 47.3 tackling score. The other player who scored in the 90s for the Steelers was Cam Heyward who had an 85.9 pass rushing score, a 79.6 run defense score, and a 64.0 tackling score.

The Steelers had two players finish in the 80s for the season and Alex Highsmith (89.1) and Nick Herbirg (80.7). Highsmith had solid marks across the board with an 89.4 pass rush score, a team-high 79.8 coverage score, 78.3 run defense score, and a 75.1 tackling score. As for Herbig, he had a team-high 91.5 pass rush score but poor numbers in the other three categories. Herbig had a 48.2 run defense score, a 47.9 coverage score, and a team-low 27.0 tackling score.

There were seven players on the Steelers defense who scored in the 70s, with two of them playing less than 20 snaps on defense. Miles Killebrew had a 75.5 overall on only 17 snaps while Mark Robinson had a 71.2 on only 13 snaps. Another player who was very limited and did not finish the year with the Steelers was Terrell Edmunds who had a 71.6 on 69 snaps. The regular players who scored in the 70s for the Steelers were Elandon Robert (79.7), Payton Wilson (74.7), Deshon Elliott (71.1), and Keeanu Benton (70.0). Roberts led the team in run defense score with a 91.0 and DeShon Elliott as the top tackling score of 90.6. When it came to rookie Payton Wilson, his top individual score came in coverage with a 77.3 which was second on the team only Alex Highsmith (technically Montravius Adams had a 78.1 coverage score but was deemed to have played no coverage snaps).

Unlike the Steelers offense, there were a number of Steelers who scored less than a 50.0 on the season. One player scored in the 30s as Dean Lowry had a 34.3 overall score largely in part due to a team-low 28.0 run defense score and a 29.0 tackling score.

There were five players on the Steelers defense who scored in the 40s for the season. Montravius Adams had a 44.2 overall mainly based on a 29.8 run defense score despite the anomaly of him having a high coverage score without playing any coverage snaps. Jeremiah Moon also had a 44.2 overall which was lower than any of his individual numbers. The other three players scoring in the 40s were Larry Ogunjobi (48.3), Donte Jackson (49.4), and Cam Sutton (49.5). Jackson and Sutton had their low scores based on being the bottom two scores in coverage with Sutton being a 45.0 and Jackson being a 45.1.

The Steelers had a number of notable players scoring in the 50s in Joey Porter Jr. (54.6), Beanie Bishop (55.6), James Pierre (56.2), Patrick Queen (56.8), and Isaiahh Lowdermilk (59.3).

When it came to notable players scoring in the 60s, they include Preston Smith (63.6), which includes his time in Green Bay, Minkah Fitzpatrick (65.2) DeMarvin Leal (68.3), and Corey Trice (69.4). Trice had the top coverage score of any player in the secondary with a 75.3.

When it came to these scores, nothing really jumped out of me as being off and they seemed more accurate outside of a few anomalies. I don’t get how defensive lineman can get coverage scores without playing any coverage snaps. When it came to T.J. Watt having the highest score, this was based more off him scoring in the 90s in four of the Steelers first eight games. After the bye week, Watt only scored in the 80s in two games. I also found it interesting that Watt scored well all season except the three matchups against the Baltimore Ravens where he scored in the 50s for each of those games.

Cam Heyward had a great season and it makes sense he scored in the 90s as well for the Steelers. Heyward had eight games scoring in the 80s or 90s and another four scoring in the 70s.

Nick Herbig was very curious with his overall score. He was very “feast or famine” all season. Herbig had four games where he scored in the 90s but none in the 70s or 80s. He had three game scoring in the 60s, four game scoring in the 50s, two games scoring in the 30s, and one game scoring in the 20s. To me, I don’t know that his overall grade matches this, but it does show that he did struggle with consistency and did not have a very good score after Week 13.

Players like Micah Fitzpatrick and Patrick Queen as well as Joey Porter Jr. and Beanie Bishop ending up in the middle is probably a good way to describe their seasons. There were plenty of games I thought Porter should have been scored higher but was not.

When it comes to the scores at the bottom, it has a lot of numbers from players who I’m not sure the Steelers should retain for next season. I thought Montravius Adams had numbers that were lower than I expected, but it’s not as if they should’ve been overwhelmingly higher. Seeing players like Lowry, Ogunjobi, Jackson, and Sutton towards the bottom has me thinking that’s where they should have been.

My grade of the Steelers 2024 PFF scores: B