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 8 win over the Giants with my grade of PFF at the end.

Offense

The Steelers offense saw the same two players with the top grades this week as they did last week, but in a different order. This week saw Darnell Washington as the top scorer on offense with a 92.7 overall based on a team-high 90.1 passing grade as well as a team-high 81.6 run blocking grade. The only other score above an 80.0 on the offense this week belonged to George Pickens with an 81.6. Pickens had an 80.8 passing score which was the main contribution.

The Steelers only had two other players on offense that scored in the 70s. Dan Moore Jr., a player who Steelers’ Nation is now starting to warm up to, had a 75.6 overall based on a 70.3 pass blocking score and a 75.1 run blocking score which was only behind Darnell Washington. The other player in the 70s was Van Jefferson with a 74.8 overall score based on a 72.6 passing score and a 71.9 run blocking score.

The Steelers only had one offensive player score below a 50 this week. Although it was an offensive lineman, it’s probably not the one many would think. Mason McCormick had a 44.5 overall score based on a 16.3 pass blocking score and a 53.9 run blocking score. McCormick also had a penalty called against him.

The other players towards the bottom of the list were Michael Pruitt (51.7), Scotty Miller (54.4), and Broderick Jones (56.8). It was interesting that Jones scored above a 60.0 in both subcategories as he was 60.5 pass blocking and 60.3 run blocking but the penalty called against him brought his score down.

Other players of note were Calvin Austin with a 66.6 overall score based on a 65.9 passing score. Austin’s punt return for a touchdown did not calculate into the score he had as that is a separate punting score with special teams which was an 86.9. Russell Wilson had a 65.3 overall score but a 76.0 passing score. What brought him down was a 28.5 running score which was greatly influenced by his fumble.

The top pass blocking score this week went to Connor Heyward with an 81.3 but only led to a 64.6 overall score. Najee Harris was next with a 76.6 pass blocking score and had a team-high 65.6 running score. But a 44.2 passing score brought him down to a 63.1 overall score. Jaylen Warren actually had a better overall score than Harris with a 64.2 as he had the second-highest passing grade of 83.8. It also helped Warren finally had a decent pass blocking score of 66.3.

An interesting anomaly was the one snap of tackle Calvin Anderson. He received a 0.0 pass blocking grade, which isn’t surprising based on the outcome of the play. I don’t know if it was because it was a zero, but it did not affect his overall score which ended up as a 60.0.

Defense

It’s no surprise that T.J. Watt once again lead the way for the Steelers, this time with the 91.7 overall score. Watt had a 91.7 pass rushing score as well along with his 70.5 run defense score. Just behind Watt was Alex Highsmith with an 87.5 overall based on a 91.2 pass rushing score.

The Steelers defense had two more players who scored in the 80s. Cam Hayward had an 86.7 overall score with a 79.7 pass rushing score at 73.5 run defense score. Elandon Roberts had an 81.3 overall score based on a team high 81.0 run defense score.

Only two players scored in the 70s for the Steelers defense in Joey Porter Jr. (77.4) and Minkah Fitzpatrick (76.5).

There were plenty of scores at the bottom as there were five players who scored below a 50 on the defense. Larry Ogunjobi had a 36.3 overall score based on a 35.7 run defense score and a 30.1 tackling score along with a 52.0 rushing score. Deshon Elliott had his lowest score of the season with a 42.1 overall which was brought down by a 33.8 run defense score and a 39.4 tackling score.

The other scores below a 50.0 for the Steelers defense were Keeanu Benton (43.4), Dean Lowry (44.0), and Jeremiah Moon (49.1). Benton finished with the lowest tackling score on the defense with a 26.2.

Interestingly enough, Payton Wilson led the Steelers defense with the top coverage score of a 78.8, but a team-low 29.7 run defense score brought him down to a 59.1 overall. The top tackling score went to Beanie Bishop with an 83.6 as he had a 64.5 overall score based on a 62.1 coverage score.

One of the biggest things that stood out for the Steelers defense was actually from the statistics that PFF keeps. With three different categories of pressures between sacks, quarterback hits, and hurries, the Steelers had 31 total pressures in the game with 4 sacks, 12 quarterback hits other than the sacks, and 15 hurries.

Overall

There weren’t as many egregious scores for the Steelers this week. I didn’t think Mason McCormick was the worst player on the Steelers offense, so that one was pretty curious. I’d have to go back and check the tape to see if he deserved his 16.3 pass blocking score. It seems odd that he was only credited with giving up two hurries for such a low score while Broadrick Jones gave up three hurries and a sack yet had a 60.5 blocking score.

The top defensive scores seemed to line up pretty well with things. Deshon Elliott was not standing out in a good way like he normally did, so seeing a low score from him wasn’t out of the question but I expected him to be more middle of the road Like Patrick Queen (64.6) and Damontae Kazee (64.5). One thing that was common with some of the lowest scores was they were players that weren’t credited with a missed tackle.

While I often focus on the negative, I should commend PFF for getting the top half of the defensive scores pretty much how I thought they would be. In all, it wasn’t a bad week despite a few questionable things.

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