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 18 win over the Ravens with my grade of PFF at the end.

Offense

The Steelers had some nice grades at the top of their offense for the final week of the season. What might surprise mini is the top grade of a 90.1 went to Connor Heyward with an 87.1 passing score and a 79.3 run block in the score, both highest on the team this week. Heyward was followed by Diontae Johnson with an 87.5 overall an 85.6 passing score who was just ahead of Najee Harris with an 86.0 overall score based on his 77.3 passing score and 81.2 running score. The rest of the Steelers top five were rounded out by offensive linemen with Isaac Seumalo (78.5) and James Daniels (69.0).

While those scores in the top five seemed reasonable, there were plenty of things that were confusing, and not just from a poor score standpoint. Coming just outside of the top five was Dan Moore with a 62.1 overall score and a 63.9 pass blocking score, higher than that of James Daniel (60.7), Broderick Jones (34.2), and Mason Cole (32.9). PFF credited Moore with giving up one of the Steelers sacks but only had him giving up two pressures in the game. While I haven’t watched the game back a second time at this moment, this did not pass my eye test from Saturday.

In looking at scores at the bottom, there are some that I expected but others I did not. George Pickens had a 51.1 overall score with a 51.6 passing score which is interesting since he was never targeted. But he was given a 41.9 run blocking score, the worst on the team, and I noticed a few times of him getting involved with the blocking and not standing out in a bad way. But perhaps it was just I didn’t notice it.

Jaylen Warren was towards the bottom of things with a 49.2 overall score which doesn’t surprise me based on his ball security issues this game. I was surprised that the aforementioned Broderick Jones came in lower than Warren with a 48.3 overall score. And my biggest surprise comes with the lowest score of the team being Mason Rudolph with a 39.4 overall score. While I knew Rudolph’s fumbles would bring him down, I did not expect a 46.2 passing score for a player they only had two incompletions in the game, one of which was a deep ball which appeared to be more on the receiver then on the pass thrower. Yes, the other incompletion was nearly an interception, but I just find it difficult a player who completes 90% of his passes in a downpour is given such a poor passing score.

Defense

The Steelers defense had some phenomenal overall scores with three player scoring in the 90s and 10 in total above a 70.0. Mark Robinson lead the race with a 94.2 overall score based on a 93.1 run defense score. T.J. Watt was next in line with a 91.6 overall score based on his team-high 91.0 pass rushing score. Armon Watts was the other player who scored in the 90s with his 90.3 overall score based on his nine defensive snaps.

The next three highest scores for the Steelers defense belonged to Alex Highsmith (87.2), Elandon Roberts (83.6), and Eric Rowe (79.4).

I was surprised to see the five lowest scores on the defense (notably only six scores were below a 60.0) coming from those selected by PFF. Larry Ogunjobi was in the bottom with a 55.5 overall score but he never gets any love from PFF. Montravius Adams had a 52.0 but was dinged with his tackling where he had a 22.9 score. Although I didn’t think he stood out in an outstanding way, I didn’t expect Patrick Peterson to have a 39.6 overall score which was significantly lower than any of his individual scores. The other bottom two players were quite head scratching with Keeanu Benton with a 38.8 overall score which was brought down from the 36.6 running score, and Myles Jack with a 36.9 overall score based on the 32.2 coverage score.

If someone were to tell me Mark Robinson and Myles Jack were the best and worst scores from PFF this week, I probably would have gotten them backwards. I know Mark Robinson had a nice sack, but he also took himself out of the play on the Ravens one rush in the second quarter that set up their only touchdown. The play of these two players just did not seem to be nearly 60 points apart.

Overall

Maybe it had to do with trying to grade players while they were playing in the rain and not taking this into account, but the scores just seem wonky to me. When I looked at the order of the names both on offense and defense, it wasn’t what I expected. I expected to see Dan Moore, not Broderick Jones, towards the bottom of the offense. I also didn’t expect Mason Rudolph to land at the bottom but figured it would be more in the middle.

As for the defense, I think there was a lot they got right in regards to players like T.J. Watt and Elandon Roberts. I was just surprised to see the players at the bottom having scores in the 30s which didn’t feel correct to me.

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