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 2 win over the Broncos with my grade of PFF at the end.

Offense

It’s not taking long for me to get into my issues with PFF this week as the top score on offense is mind-boggling. James Daniels was the top score with a 91.5 overall based on a 93.2 run blocking score and a 39.7 pass blocking score. When looking at the snaps, Daniels had exactly 33 snaps for each category with a total of 66. Some people may notice that the Steelers didn’t run that many offensive plays, but PFF grades plays that are nullified by penalties anyway (which is very helpful to somebody like George Pickens). So how does a player score in the 90s for half of his snaps and in the 30s for the other half and have an overall grade in the 90s? I don’t understand.

The next high score was an 88.3 overall from Darnell Washington who had quality scores in all aspects of his game. The Steelers had two players score in the 70s on offense with George Pickens getting a 79.6 overall based on a team-high 78.9 passing score. The other player in the 70s was Dan Moore Jr. with a 74.9 overall score based on a 76.9 run blocking score and a 65.1 pass blocking score.

Just missing the 70s was Justin Fields with a 69.9 overall based on a 73.9 passing score.

As for the scores at the bottom, it was no surprise that Broderick Jones was there by a large margin as he scored a 35.1 overall on his 11 offensive snaps. But Jones’ score when it came to actually blocking weren’t terrible as he had a 57.7 pass blocking score and a 60.8 run blocking score. What brought him down was having three penalties in 11 snaps.

The only other offensive player to score below 50 overall was Connor Heyward with a 46.5. Much like Jones, his individual scores were not this low but was brought down due to having a penalty.

Because there are not many keys statistics to judge the offensive line, I often like to highlight their scores to help everyone understand how one place evaluated their play. Troy Fautanu came in with a score above the 60.0 standard with a 64.4 based on a 69.3 pass blocking and a 59.3 run blocking score. Spencer Anderson and Zach Frazier below the standard this week with Frazier having a 55.9 overall with a 34.4 pass blocking and 59.8 run blocking score. Anderson had a 52.6 overall with a 47.2 pass blocking and 54.1 run blocking score. I will say right now that I don’t agree with the score given to Frazier.

Believe it or not, the top running score this week went to Cordarrelle Patterson with a 66.2 followed by Najee Harris with a 64.1. Surprisingly Jaylen Warren came in with only a 50.3 running score and was given a 37.0 pass blocking score despite constantly picking up blitzes that did not get to the quarterback. PFF continues to screw this up.

The top pass blocking score went to Najee Harris with the 77.5 and the top offensive lineman was Troy Fautanu with a 69.3. The top run blocking score was already addressed with James Daniels obviously getting the high mark of 93.2 which was followed by Dan Moore with a 76.9 and Darnell Washington with a 71.9.

Defense

On the defensive side of the ball, Cory Trice was the top overall score with a 90.1 based off of his team-leading coverae score of the same amount. Keeanu Benton brought in the second highest score with an 88.7 based on solid numbers in both run defense and pass rush which were both in the 70s. The other overall score in the 80s belonged to Deshon Elliott with an 80.5 led by his team-high 87.9 run defense score.

The Steelers had four other players score in the 70s with Elandon Roberts (79.8), T.J. Watt (77.1), Minkah Fitzpatrick (76.1), and Cam Heyward (70.0).

The Steelers had two players score below a 50.0 overall this week, and you’ll see they are a little head-scratching. Beanie Bishop was the bottom score with a 41.5 overall based on a team-low 39.6 coverage score. PFF has Bishop giving up three receptions for 42 yards on the day. The other player at the bottom was Joey Porter Jr. with a 45.8 overall score. Porter was given a poor tackling score of 33.1 as they credited him with a missed tackle, but they had him with the second-lowest coverage score as well with a 48.7.  Yes, he had three penalties called on him which were not accepted, but anyone watching this game could see that Joey Porter was not one of the worst coverage players on the field.

The top pass rushing score this week went to Patrick Queen with a 75.5 which contributed to a 61.0 overall score as he was brought down with a 53.2 coverage score. In both pass rush and run defense, it was Keeanu Benton who had the second highest score. For those who were looking, T.J. Watt had the fourth-highest pass rush score (63.8)  behind Alex Highsmith (69.0) and just ahead of Nick Herbig (63.7).

Special Teams

I was not surprised one bit to see Ben Skowronek with the top special teams grade of 84.3 which actually had him ranked 10th of all players in the NFL for Week 2. The other high scores belonged to Tyler Matakevich (72.5) and MyCole Pruitt (69.7). Cordless Waitman had a 77.4 punting score which was third best in the NFL for Week 2. Chris Boswell’s field goal score was 67.7 as he was not called on as often as he was last week.

Looking at the bottom scores, the only two that were below 50.0 were Darius Rush (46.3) and Nick Herbig (49.9).

Overall

There was just way too much screwy stuff this week to feel comfortable with these grades. I don’t get how a player can score so poorly pass blocking when they are doing it for half of the time and yet get a fantastic overall score that’s almost the same as the run blocking score. James Daniel score just feels off. I also don’t agree that Zach Frazier had a game that was below the line, and the breakdown by Brian Baldinger on X backs up my sediments. The Jaylen Warren pass blocking grade is something that is a flaw in their evaluation that they simply won’t fix.

On defense there wasn’t much that stood out to give a poor score for someone other than Joey Porter not having a coverage score reflective of what he’s been doing. He’s not going to get the love from PFF, but he has been given the most difficult coverage responsibilities and has been keeping the other teams top option in check. That should not equate to a poor grade.

As I’ve said before, it does not mean the PFF grades are all wrong, but if you’re going to give grades to people they need to all be correct. Because this is the task, getting 10% of them way wrong is a terrible grade.

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