Earlier this season I decided to switch up how I report the grades by Pro Football Focus (PFF) because of some of the absurdity of their findings. 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 Week 16 win over the Bengals with my grade of PFF at the end.

Offense

I don’t think it would be shocking for anyone to find out George Pickens had the top offensive PFF grade for the Steelers this week. Pickens had a 90.1 overall and an 88.3 passing score. Pickens overall score had him forth among wide receivers for Week 16 only behind Amari Cooper (94.9), Gabe Davis (92.5), and Puka Nacua (92.5).

The other two scores for the Steelers offense that came in over 70.0 both belong to offensive linemen in Isaac Seumalo (82.6) and Mason Cole (71.7). Seumalo had the second-highest pass blocking score (80.7) only behind Jaylen Warren’s 83.3. When it came to run blocking, Seumalo had a top score of 77.9 followed by Mason Cole’s 73.0.

Speaking of Jaylen Warren, he had the fourth-highest offensive grade of 66.9 thanks in part to a 75.2 passing score to go along with quality blocking scores. It was actually his run score of 54.1 which brought him down.

For those curious about Mason Rudolph’s score, he came in with a 65.0 overall and a 63.0 passing score. Rudolph’s overall score landed him and in the middle of the pack when it came to quarterbacks in Week 16. And for those who are wondering just for comparison sake, six of Kenny Pickett‘s 13 games had a overall score higher than Rudolph’s this past week. I’m not judging this one way or another, but just thought I would share the information.

The low score on the offense for the Steelers was Pat Freiermuth with a 51.9 overall based on a 50.0 passing score which was lowest on the team. I understand that Freiermuth was not targeted in the game, but I did not necessarily think that it was anything he was doing that wasn’t of high quality and more based on how he was a large focal point of the defense.

Defense

Before getting into the individual scores, the Steelers had 17 of 21 defenders score above a 60.0 in Week 16. The Steelers had two players score in the 90s and two more score above an 88.0.

The top score of this week went to Alex Highsmith with a 91.9 overall. His top grade came in the pass rush with an 81.6 which was actually third on the team behind T.J. Watt (92.4) and Keeanu Benton (85.9). Highsmith had another high score in coverage with a 77.8 only behind Elandon Roberts (79.3). When it came to Highsmith’s top score, it really was because he had quality scores across the board.

T.J. Watt was the other player over 90.0 as he had an overall score of 91.1 and a pass rush grade of 92.4. Watt’s pass rushing score was the best of any player in the NFL during Week 16.

The other two scores on the defense that came in high were Keeanu Benton just missing the 90.0 with an 89.8 overall score with a fantastic 85.9 pass rushing score. Not far behind was Elijah Riley with an 88.4 overall score although he only played three defensive snaps. Riley had the fourth-best coverage score (73.4) on the Steelers defense behind the already mentioned Elandon Roberts and Alex Highsmith as well as Miles Killebrew (73.6).

The Steelers had a number of defenders with quality defense of scores including Mark Robinson (80.7), Markus Golden (77.2), Elandon Roberts (76.9), Larry Ogunjobi (76.8), Miles Killebrew (75.2), and Chandon Sullivan (70.3).

On the other end of the spectrum, the Steelers two starting corners had grades in the 50s with Levi Wallace (58.8) and Joey Porter Jr. (54.0). Both players scored in the 40s when it came to the run defense, and their pass defense saw Wallace with a 61.1 and Porter with a 57.2. I find Porter’s score quite interesting as he gave up two receptions on three targets for a total of 15 yards. What didn’t help Porter’s case was having a penalty called on him, but the fact that Porter was following the team‘s best receiver and hardly gave up anything is not something PFF takes into consideration. If this is the case, I’ll take scores in the 50 from Joey Porter anytime.

The two lowest scores on defense for the day came from Montravius Adams (45.5) and Eric Rowe (36.5). When I came to Rowe, he did get the job done with an interception but did struggle with taking proper angles and tackling in his first game of the season.

Overall

The grades weren’t terribly off from what I thought this week. I thought Eric Rowe would get more of a break in coverage and have some of his problems as tackling as they did. I also thought there would be more of a break given to Joy Porter Jr. with what he was tasked to do. But having Highsmith, Watt, and Benton very high up I felt was accurate.

On offense, I thought there would be a higher passing grade for Mason Rudolph the way he dropped some of the deep balls in like he did. Yes there were others that weren’t perfect but it seems like Kenny Pickett gets more of a break for his negatives than Rudolph did. I also liked how there were no overly poor scores on the Steelers offense which I thought was also accurate. And for once, Jaylen Warren had quality blocking scores that he rightfully earned. PFF aslo doesn’t take into account Mason Cole’s poor snaps which could become a big issue.

My grade of this week’s PFF scores: C+