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 Wild Card loss to the Bills with my grade of PFF at the end.

Offense

The Steelers top offensive PFF score this week came from a player who was arguably the best player throughout the season. Guard Isaac Seumalo put up an 83.1 overall score based on his team-leading 72.6 pass blocking score and second-best run blocking score of 82.5.

What might surprise Steelers fans is the player with the second-highest score and the only other one above a 70.0. Often ridiculed when fans don’t know who else to blame, Dan Moore had his best game of the season at least according to PFF. Moore had an overall score of 77.5 where he had the second-highest pass blocking score of 69.4 in the fourth highest run blocking score of 81.4.

What may have been noticeable is how high the run blocking scores were this week despite the Steelers not having the most success. Dan Moore had the fourth-highest score but was in the 80s. The reason for this is that two wide receivers had high run blocking scores in George Pickens (85.4) and Allen Robinson (81.8). Unfortunately, the other three offensive linemen had run blocking scores below a 50.0 with James Daniels (48.3), Broderick Jones (47.7), and Mason Cole (41.9).

In all, the Steelers only had seven players score above the 60.0 standard on offense. Other than the two players already mentioned, the other five scores (all in the 60s) were Diontae Johnson (68.8), Allen Robinson (67.3), Pat Freiermuth (65.6), Jaylen Warren (62.9), and Mason Rudolph (61.5).

There were three scores that stood out at the bottom more than any others as they were below a 40.0. Broderick Jones had a 36.9 overall score, the lowest of his career, based on a 25.0 pass blocking score and 47.7 run blocking score. Darnell Washington had a 33.0 overall score despite a quality run blocking score of 74.2. Washington was brought down with a 30.4 passing score and a 35.8 pass blocking score but was also dinged for having two penalties called against him. The bottom score for the week came from center Mason Cole with a season-low 28.7 overall score. His 8.5 pass blocking score and 41.9 run blocking score attributed to the lowest grade he has seen as a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Defense

The defensive scores were led by Keeanu Benton with an 80.2 overall based on his 88.5 pass rush score. It was almost 20 points higher than the second-highest pass rushing score for the Steelers of 68.9 which belonged to Nick Herbig.

The Steelers had five players score a 70.0 or above with Benton being the only score of the 80s. The other top scores were Armon Watts (75.0), Eric Rowe (73.3), Minkah Fitzpatrick (72.9), and Cam Heyward (71.9). Eric Rowe led the coverage scores with a 69.9 followed by Fitzpatrick with a 66.3. Despite Fitzpatrick’s missed tackle on the last touchdown, it was his only one with 10 additional tackles and therefore his tackling score was a solid 67.5. Fitzpatrick was also graded as the top run defender with a 76.7 followed by a Rowe with a 73.6.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Steelers had three players who scored less than a 50.0. Patrick Peterson landed a 48.7 overall score based on low marks in coverage (49.1), pass rush (39.6), and tackling (31.3). Myles Jack wasn’t far behind with a 48.0 overall score mainly brought down with a 47.9 coverage score and two penalties called against him. Once again landing with a bad score the lowest grade belonged to Mark Robinson with a 42.0 overall score. While it is expected for him to have a low coverage score (43.1) which was worst on the team, his run defense score of 54.4 did not help elevate things.

Overall

I can’t really complain about these grades this week. I thought Minkah Fitzpatrick would get dinged on more things because he often does by PFF, but did not this week. Keeanu Benton didn’t stand out to me in a huge way to where I thought his pass rush stood out above everyone else by such a degree, but he had two pressures on 11 pass rushing snaps.

When it comes to offense, some probably believe that Dan Moore Jr. should not have received such a high grade but this week I have to agree with it. He was not standing out in a bad way. Broderick Jones did struggle throughout the game but I thought his scores were slightly lower than what I expected. But after making the comments he did this week the Buffalo defenders placed a target on his back. As for just about everyone else, grades were either slightly below or slightly above average depending on the player. To me that pretty much sums up  the Steelers offensive performance.

I will make one last note about special teams as the top score went to Montravius Adams due to his blocked field goal where the bottom score went to Dan Moore Jr. based on his personal foul penalty (which did not affect his offensive score).

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