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.

So here are my overall impressions of the scores from the Steelers Preseason Week 3 loss to the Lions with my grade of PFF at the end.

Offense

The 40 players who played offensive snaps for the Steelers in their final preseason game, 20 of them finished higher than a 60.0 average score by PFF while the other 20 finished below. Scoring in the 90s was wide receiver Jaray Jenkins scoring a 94.2 overall score on eight plays. It was his 93.1 passing score on three plays that led to this number. The other player who scored above a 90 was George Pickens who had a 91.3 overall on five snaps. His two passing snaps gave him an 88.7 passing score. The other player who scored above an 80 was another wide receiver in Dez Fitzpatrick with a 83.0 overall score on 20 snaps with an 81.1 passing score on 11 passing plays.

There were four players who scored above a 75.0 in the game on offense in John Rhys Plumlee (79.9), Russell Wilson (77.6), Zach Frazier (76.4), and Quez Watkins (75.8). All of the Steelers quarterbacks had satisfactory scores with Kyle Allen having a 73.4 and Justin Fields having a 68.8 overall.

When it came to the scores at the bottom, there were six players who had overall scores less than a 50.0 and all but one of them were offensive linemen. The bottom score went to guard Tyler Beach with a 35.9 despite both his pass blocking and run blocking scores being in the 50s. But Beach also had a penalty called against him which brought his score down. Isaac Seumalo scored a 40.7 which was baffling to me. He had a 77.2 pass blocking grade but was given a 41.9 run blocking grade. I didn’t notice him being bad with run blocking outside of his great block on Patterson‘s touchdown. So I’m not sure what’s going on here.

Other scores at the bottom were Spencer Anderson with a 42.0 based on a 12.5 pass blocking grade. That was not the lowest pass blocking grade as tackle Anderson Hardy, with a 44.8 overall score, had a 7.4 pass blocking grade. The other two players below 50 were tight end Matt Sokol with a 46.6 overall despite not having any grades below 50. The last player was guard Joey Fisher with a 46.7 overall score. What’s interesting about him is he had an 81.8 pass blocking score and a 63.6 run blocking score, both considered passing grades. But it was his two penalties which dropped his score because nothing else can explain it otherwise. And when it came to those penalties, they ended the Steelers final offensive drive of the game.

When it came to pass blocking grades, Mason McCormick was on top with an 84.2 followed by Joey Fisher (81.8) and Dan Moore (80.3). Zach Frazier led all run blocking scores with a 75.4 with the next highest grade being Dan Moore with a 67.3.

The top run score belonged to Aaron Champlin with a 73.9 followed by Cordarrelle Patterson with a 67.1.

Defense

Making the most of his nine snaps, Nick Herbig topped the defensive scores with the 97.0 overall and a 94.9 pass rushing score. The next highest grade belonged to Keeanu Benton with an 89.9 overall based on the second-highest pass rushing score of 87.9.

The two other highest scores that were both above an 80.0 belonged to Larry Ogunjobi (84.6) and cornerback Kyler McMichael (82.2). Ogunjobi’s score was due to a 81.3 pass rush score while McMichael had a team-high coverage score of 83.7.

When it came to the low scores, linebacker Kyahva Tezino was at the bottom with a 26.0 overall score due to a 45.2 run defense score and the 36.0 coverage score. Linebacker Kiondre Thomas had a 37.3 overall mainly due to a 30.0 coverage score. The other two bottom scores were DeMarvin Leal (38.9) and Ryan Watts (44.5). Leal had an interesting score of 59.3 for run defense and a 40.8 coverage score on two snaps. Frankly, I wouldn’t expect Leal to have a good coverage score. But he also had a low 28.6 tackling score for something that seemed quite curious.  PFF had Leal with a 100% tackle rate as he had one missed tackle and no tackles. But yet he had half a sack (which they have as a whole sack because they don’t do half sacks). Although a sack can come without a tackle such as a strip sack or if the quarterback goes down on his own or goes out of bounds where the closest player gets the sack. That did not appear to be the case with the sack Leal split with Keeanu Benton.

When it came to Ryan Watts’ low score, he had a 39.9 coverage score along with a 29.0 tackling score as he also had a missed tackle.

For the top run defense score, it belonged to Marcus Haynes with a 77.1. One player of note in run defense was Mark Robinson who had a 74.4 score which was much improved from his previous outings this preseason.

In coverage, after Kyler McMichael the next highest grade was Cory Trice with a 75.6 and the only other score above a 70. It should be noted when looking at the two players vying for the slot cornerback position, Beanie Bishop had the higher coverage score of a 68.6 while Thomas Graham had only a 48.7.But Graham had a better overall score of 56.4 and a 73.8 run defense score while Bishops’ 50.2 overall was brought down by a 29.5 run defense score. So looking strictly at PFF grades, Bishop was the better player in pass coverage while Graham gave more support to the run.

Special Teams

When it came to special teams, those standing out on the high-end were led by Ryan Watts with a 72.6 score followed by Jacoby Windmon (67.8), Jaray Jenkins (67.3), Dez Fitzpatrick (67.2), and Cory Trice (67.1). Scores coming in at the bottom where Luquay Washington (30.0), Thomas Graham (31.5), Tyler Beach (40.2), Darius Rush (43.4), and Scotty Miller (46.0). Of the bottom five scores, three of them were because they had a penalty called against them.

Overall

Many of the scores lined up with what I expected them to be. My biggest surprise was probably DeMarvin Leal on defense as I didn’t think he would have been towards the bottom. But seeing players like Nick Herb and Keeanu Benton topping the defense was how the scores should have been. As for the offense, it seemed what I expected as well outside of the low score for Isaac Seumalo. I still can’t believe there were more players that scored above an 80 in pass blocking the previous week than in this game. The pass blocking was bad after the top until, but the 1s were better than last week. Overall things didn’t stand out as being blatantly incorrect.

My grade of this week’s PFF scores: B