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 1 win over the Falcons with my grade of PFF at the end.

Offense

The top overall grade for the Steelers offense of a 77.1 went to Connor Heyward on only five snaps. But on those five snaps, Heyward was run blocking for all of them and had a team-high 81.7 run blocking score. I must admit that outside of the third down conversion in the red zone where he led the way for Justin Fields, I didn’t notice him otherwise. So that score isn’t one that stands out one way or the other.

The second-highest score might surprise people as it was Justin Fields with a 75.9 overall based on a 77.4 passing score and a 63.7 rushing score. Other players who scored in the 70s were James Daniels (75.8), Dan Moore (75.4), George Pickens (71.5), and Zach Frazier (70.1). I was surprised to see James Daniels this high, especially with a 74.6 pass blocking score, since he did give up one of the Steelers sacks. But it was the only pressure he gave up on the day. The top pass blocker for the Steelers was Dan Moore with an 88.7 as he gave up no pressures and had the third-highest blocking score among all NFL players in Week 1.

When it came to scores at the bottom, there were only two scores below 50.0 that belonged to Van Jefferson (45.3) and Calvin Austin (48.1). Although their passing scores were in the 50s, what brought them down was they both had run blocking scores in the 30s.

The two lowest scores after Jefferson and Austin belonged to Broderick Jones (50.8) and Spencer Anderson (52.3). Anderson had a 55.7 pass blocking score and a 57.7 run blocking score. Jones did better in the pass blocking department with a 63.1 but only had a 50.5 when it came to run blocking.

Defense

To the surprise of no one, T.J. Watt had the highest defensive score with a 95.3 overall based on a 94.6 pass rush score and an 81.4 run defense score. In fact, Watt had the highest score of any defensive player in Week 1.

The next highest score for the Steelers defense belonged to Cam Heyward with an 89.4 overall. Heyward had the top run defense score of 81.6 and also added a quality 73.3 pass rushing score. The only other player above 80.0 overall was DeShon Elliott with an 86.0. Even though Elliott only had a 59.9 run defense score, he had a team-high 86.9 coverage score.

There were three players who had an overall score in the 70s on the defense. They were Damontae Kazee (78.2), Montravius Adams (73.8), and Minkah Fitzpatrick (71.5). Fitzpatrick lead the team with an 85.8 tackling score which was fourth in the NFL excluding the Monday night game.

Coming in with the bottom score was new Steelers linebacker Patrick Queen with a 28.8 overall grade. Queen graded out with a 26.7 run defense score and a 49.4 coverage score as well as a 26.1 tackling score as PFF graded him to have four missed tackles on the day, half of the total for the Steelers overall.

The other scores on the bottom were Elandon Roberts with a 36.5 overall score and Keeanu Benton with a 45.6 overall score. Benton actually had a 71.6 pass rushing score but was brought down with a 39.7 run defense score.

Special Teams

I won’t always include this position breakdown, simply because I don’t understand what separates things. Somehow Chris Boswell ended up with a 60.0 special teams score but a 90.3 field goal score. I don’t understand how they differentiate between the various things. I will say Boswell was the highest field goal score by far in Week 1.

The top scorers on special teams belong to Scotty Miller (79.3), Darius Rush (75.9) Tyler Matakevich (73.0), and Payton Wilson (70.0). Scores standing out at the bottom were Miles Killebrew with a 27.7 and Mark Roberson with a 44.8, both players who had penalties called on them.

Overall

I thought some of the high grades made a lot of sense for the Steelers. T.J. Watt scoring through the roof just tells us what we know about him. I do find it interesting in a game where he only got one sack he had such a great score where he has had other games with multiple sacks where he did not. I was surprised to see James Daniels graded the way he did, as the best offensive lineman, but it’s also important to realize that I only paid attention to him specifically on a couple plays. As for Dan Moore, I watched the game again on Monday looking at every one of his snaps and feel that his scores are justified. He did pretty well run blocking, and did a very nice job pass blocking.

I didn’t think Broderick Jones and Spencer Anderson did all that much to have lower grades, but relatively speaking their grades weren’t that bad. I would have expected them to be in the low to mid 60s rather than the low 50s.

I know some Steelers fans are already jumping on him, but Patrick Queen brought a lot more to the Steelers defense than what his grade shows. He was commanding things, particularly the second half, which doesn’t get acknowledged in these scores. I also didn’t notice Keeanu Benton standing out in a bad way, but I wasn’t specifically looking at him. Otherwise, it’s nice to see Cam Heyward getting acknowledged when he’s playing well despite not always having the most statistics. He is one of several players on the Steelers defense that the offense has to avoid, therefore sometimes he doesn’t stand out as much. But he was having a huge impact just like T.J. Watt, Minkah Fitzpatrick, and Joey Porter Jr.

My grade of this week’s PFF scores: B