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 4 loss to the Colts with my grade of PFF at the end.

Offense

It’s one thing for the Steelers to have lost this game, but there’s going to be a portion of the fan base that would lose their collective minds with the top PFF score on the offense if they put any stock in these grades. But I don’t think this one is far off based on one viewing. It was Dan Moore Jr. that led the charge with the 75.7 overall for the offense with a 75.9 pass blocking score and a 72.2 run blocking score. I admit I was watching the players on the interior more in this game to see how they were holding up, but I didn’t see things standing out in a bad way to make me believe the score would be incorrect. According to PFF, Moore gave up no sacks, no quarterback hits, and only two quarterback hurries.

The next highest grade belonged to Zach Frazier with a 74.7 overall. But this is where the grades get sketchy. Frazier had a team high 78.6 pass blocking score as well as a 72.4 run blocking score. I don’t disagree with these numbers as I feel they are well represented. But PFF does not release how these things are calculated. It’s very intriguing to me that two players in Moore and Frazier, neither of which had a penalty called against them, have these scores lineup i this way. How can Frazier score higher in both pass blocking and run blocking but yet have a lower overall score?  This doesn’t make any sense.

The only other offensive player to score above a 70.0 in the game was Cordarrelle Patterson with a 71.6 overall. Patterson had a team-high running score of 66.9 and also had an impressive passing score of 80.2 before leaving the game due to injury.

They were a number of players who scored above a 65.0 on the Steelers offense which included George Pickens (69.2), Pat Freiermuth (67.7), Justin Fields (67.0), Broderick Jones (66.0), and Darnell Washington (65.5). Jones had the top run blocking score on the team with an 80.5. Darnell Washington had the top passing score of 85.7 which was the best score of any tight end in Week 4 excluding the grades from Monday night. Washington was brought down in his overall score due to team-low scores in pass blocking score (34.4) and run blocking (45.5).

When it came to the scores at the bottom, there weren’t that many below the standard 60.0 given by PFF. Connor Heyward had the lowest score of a 53.9 overall due mainly to a 51.2 passing score. In his first NFL start, Mason McCormick had a 54.2 overall score which was lower than his two blocking scores of 67.8 pass blocking and 56.0 and run blocking, but McCormick did have one penalty assessed to him which would calculate into his lower overall score. Two other players were tied for the next lowest score of a 56.6 in Scotty Miller and Calvin Austin. The only other two players to score below 60.0 were James Daniels (58.0) and Spencer Anderson (58.4).

Defense

The top score on the Steelers defense, a unit struggled this week, belongs to DeShon Elliott with an 86.2 overall. Elliott’s score was boosted by a 92.3 run defense score, the second-highest mark in the NFL regardless of position in Week 4 excluding the games from Monday night.

The next highest score on the Steelers defense, and the only other score above an 80.0, was Cam Heyward with an 80.5 overall. Once again giving solid grades across the categories, it was Heyward’s team-high pass rush score of an 84.8 which led the way.

Other scores for the Steelers that were 70.0 or above were T.J. Watt (75.8), Payton Wilson (74.0), Keeanu Benton (72.3), and Terrell Edmunds (70.3).

There were plenty of scores in the bottom end that stood out on the Steelers defense. Coming in with the lowest score was Joey Porter Jr. with a 32.8 overall. This was based on a team-low 30.1 coverage score. PFF had Porter giving up five receptions on seven targets for 81 yards and a touchdown with one pass break up and one penalty.

The other overall scores below a 50.0 on defense were Dean Lowry (37.1), Patrick Queen (40.4), and Montravius Adams (41.9). Queen had a quality pass rushing score in an average coverage score but was brought down with a 29.8 tackling score and a team-low 30.0 run defense score.

What might be the most telling about the Steelers defense was the top coverage score for the game belonged to Dante Jackson but was only a 66.6.

Overall

I skipped the special team scores this week because there were not really any that stood out. I didn’t have a big problem with the scores this week at first glance, but after digging in deeper and seeing the anomaly with the overall score compared to their individual scores for Dan Moore and Zach Frazier, it kind of put a cloud over everything else. I know some may have an issue with T.J. Watt having the third-highest score on the defense in a game where all he had were two assists on tackles, but it’s not like his score was through the roof either.

I feel the PFF scores this week mirrored the Steelers performance in a lot of ways. There were some good parts that you could see, some bad things in places, and everything else was just ‘meh”. I would have given them a B for getting things right, but I’m really struggling with the breakdown of the top scores on offense.

My grade of this week’s PFF scores: C