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.

Not only does PFF give an individual grade, but they compile them into several categories Including overall grade, various offensive grades, defensive grades, and a special team’s grade. 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 things into different articles. So here are my overall impressions of the overall scores for the Steelers 2024 season with my grade of PFF at the end.

After doing offense Tuesday followed by defense yesterday, here is the Steelers overall team scores along with where they stood when we checked in mid-season during the bye week. The total offense and defense are presented again for review along with special teams and complete overall team score.

Note: These scores are for the regular season only

Offense

2024:
Score: 74.3
Rank: t-19th

Mid-season:
Score: 73.2
Rank: t-15th

As highlighted before when looking at the individual offensive breakdowns, the Steelers offense scored in the bottom half of the NFL. It should be noted that three of the top six scored offenses did not make the postseason as the Atlanta Falcons were tied for second with the Detroit Lions, the San Francisco 49ers were fourth, and the Arizona Cardinals were sixth.

Defense

2024:
Score: 79.1
Rank: 3rd

Mid-season:
Score: 82.0
Rank: 2nd

As I stated yesterday, the Steelers had the third highest defensive score only behind the two teams in the Super Bowl in the Philadelphia Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. The top seven scores on defense all came from teams who made the playoffs.

Special Teams

2024:
Score: 85.0
Rank: 9th

Mid-season:
Score: 91.0
Rank: t-3rd

The Steelers saw a significant drop off in their special team score over the second half of the season simply because they did not continue with the stellar splash plays they had in the first half. Between blocking field goals and a punt return for a touchdown, the biggest highlights for the Steelers came in the first eight weeks. Still, it landed the Steelers as a top 10 special teams unit which helped a lot by having the best kicker in the NFL this season in Chris Boswell. But when it came to the top special teams scores, they did not correlate to playoff appearances as the top five scores only had one team, the Denver Broncos who finished third, who made the postseason.

Overall

2024:
Score: 87.2
Rank: 7th

Mid-season:
Score: 87.2
Rank: 4th

Simply because the Steelers graded as the seventh best team in the NFL does not mean that’s where they truly finished. The Detroit Lions (93.8) held the top spot followed by the Philadelphia Eagles (93.3) and then the Baltimore Ravens (93.0). Where things get screwy is the 8–9 Atlanta Falcons with the fourth best score (92.0). The next five scores all consisted of playoff teams in the Los Angeles Chargers (90.1), Kansas City Chiefs (89.0), the Steelers in seventh, the Denver Broncos (87.0), and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (86.4). Some other playoff teams included the Buffalo Bills at 19th (81.9), and the Washington Commanders in 20th (78.3). But when looking at the scores, it’s consistency through all three phases which really put teams at the top. The Buffalo Bills struggled with defensive scores as did the Washington Commanders. The Steelers nearly passed the Chiefs because they had a better special team score while the Chiefs were ahead in both offense and defense. But these scores obviously aren’t created equal as the Atlanta Falcons were fourth overall based on the third best offensive score but were 16th in defense and 24th in special teams.

I find the overall scores a little fishy. It seems that there’s more weight towards certain things such as offense than ranks in defense for a team like the Falcons, yet it’s the Steelers good defense and special teams score that land them where they were overall despite the offense lacking. It just doesn’t seem to compute. So when it comes to the overall score I can’t put much faith in those.

When looking at the overall offense, defense, and special teams, I could see why the Steelers finished where they did. The defense still seemed a little bit high as much as they struggled at the end as I had said before, particularly with getting such a high pass rush score for a team that was middle of the road in actually getting sacks.

In all, these scores are something that I find interesting but not that I would use to make a strong case to summarize the Steelers season.

My grade of the overall PFF scores: C-