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 Week 17 loss to the Chiefs with my grade of PFF at the end.

Offense

I have a feeling Steelers fans are going to be very perplexed by these numbers. For the first time in his career, Broderick Jones led the Steelers offensive grades with a career-high 83.6 overall grade. Jones had a team-high 91.4 run blocking grade along with a 68.8 pass blocking grade. According to PFF, Jones only gave up two pressures in the game with one quarterback hit and one hurry.

The next highest grade on the offense went to center, Zach Frazier with a 74.6 overall based on an 81.3 run blocking score and a 70.0 pass blocking score as he was not credited with giving up any pressures in the game.

There were only two other players with scores above a 70.0 in Max Scharping (74.3) and Darnell Washington (72.0). Sharping played seven snaps at left tackle late in the game where he had a team-high 77.0 pass blocking score along with a 69.0 run blocking score. As for Washington, he had a 72.1 passing score which was tops for him this week.

Looking at the scores at the bottom, only one player had a grade below 50.0 in Connor Heyward who had a 47.7 despite not having any individual grades below a 54.7. The biggest thing that likely brought down Heyward’s score was his offsides penalty.

There were five other players who scored below 55.0 on the offense in Van Jefferson (51.2), Mike Williams (51.8), Spencer Anderson (53.1), Scotty Miller (54.3), and Pat Freiermuth (54.3).

One thing that seemed strange is that Najee Harris had a better overall grade (69.9) than Jaylen Warren (62.6), as well as having a better run score of 71.9 compared to Warren’s 68.1. Russell Wilson had the top running score on the team at 84.4 but had only 61.5 overall score as he was brought down by a 51.8 passing score. Jaylen Warren was once again knocked down for his pass blocking with a 30.2 grade which, once again, I did not see at all.

Something that might surprise a lot of Steelers fans is the fact the offensive line had all their starters score above a 60.0 overall. They also had all of their starters score above a 60.0 in pass blocking with the lowest being Isaac Seumalo with a 61.7. When it came to run blocking, all the starters on the line were above a 60.0 with the exception of Dan Moore Junior at a 58.3. As for surrendering pressures in pass blocking, Moore was credited with giving up two sacks and three hurries. There was one other sack credited Darnell Washington, meaning Russell Wilson was credited with giving up the other two.

Defense

When it came to defense, Cam Heyward was in a league of his own with a team-high 90.1 overall defensive grade. Heyward had a team-high 81.8 pass rushing score, 78.9 run defense score, and a 71.0 tackling score.

The next defender on the list was Cory Trice with an 83.9 overall based on a team-high 90.1 coverage score. Trice did only have a 38.8 run defense score but did have a 76.4 tackling score.

There were only two other players for the Steelers who scored in the 70s in Alex Highsmith (78.7) and Isaiahh Loudermilk (71.7). Highsmith had a team-high 80.3 run defense score but only had a 54.7 pass rush score. One player who just missed out on getting a 70.0 overall defensive score was Minkah Fitzpatrick with a 69.8 overall.

When it came to the low scores, the Steelers had one score in the 30s in Donte Jackson with a 38.5 overall based on a team-low 35.1 coverage score. Two players scored in the 40s in Montravius Adams (48.9) and Payton Wilson (49.8).

The top tackling score on the team went to Cam Sutton with an 81.0 followed closely by Patrick Queen with an 80.1. But the scores did not affect the overall score scores all that much as Sutton finished with a 58.3 and Queen had a 60.8 overall. When it came to tackling, there was a huge improvement from the previous two weeks as PFF only had the Steelers with two missed tackles in the entire game.

For those who are curious, T.J. Watt had a 66.2 overall defensive score led by a 76.6 pass rush score which was only behind Cam Heyward.

Overall

There was a high-quality special team score this week with Mark Robinson having a 91.3 after having another forced fumble.

When it came to these scores, I was surprised to see the Steelers offensive line scoring so well in a game where the Steelers surrendered five sacks. But according to PFF, those sacks were as much on Russell Wilson as they were the offensive line. I can see this being a mixed result as sometimes it felt like Wilson had time but didn’t throw it while other times it felt like he had no time at all. This might be why so many wide receivers were at the bottom of the list. Still, I didn’t look at this game and think it was the best I’ve ever seen Broderick Jones play even though he didn’t stand out to me in a bad way.

Defensively I’m not surprised to see Cory Trice scoring well as I thought he did a nice job once they put him in the game. If they would have made the choice to put him in sooner, it might not have been a 13–0 deficit to start. But we’ll never know. Hopefully they find a way to have Trice on the field ahead of some other options in the secondary at this point.

I can’t give too good of a grade to PFF anytime they are scoring Jaylen Warren low for pass blocking. I also didn’t think that Najee Harris ran better and deserved a higher score. Yes Harris did rush for more yards eventually, but more than half of his yards came in garbage time on the final drive where it seemed like the Steelers were more interested in padding his stats than they were trying to make up a 19-point deficit. The eye test was obvious that Warren was the better runner on Wednesday.

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