How PFF grades shape the way we view free agent offensive linemen
Media and fans now have metrics to evaluate offensive line signings but how are the PFF grades made?
By Matthew Coller
Forgive me for sounding ancient but kids these days don’t know how good they have it with their pressure rates and Pro Football Focus grades.
On the first day of free agency, we find ourselves again digging through free agent lists and heaps of available data that point toward which players might make good targets for the Minnesota Vikings’ offensive line.
With consistent need for improvement up front over the last decade, it’s become a yearly tradition for Vikings fans and media to pop open a free agent tracker in one tab and the PFF grades in another tab and work on spotting the left guard(s) they might chase.
Of course, there’s lots of other things to add to our search. The price tag, the opinion of former players and those who study offensive line play like Trench Warfare’s Brandon Thorn and the age, injury history, price tag and any All-22 film observations (though I would not advise trying to break down offensive line play without an expert nearby).
Back in my day, we didn’t have anything other than video game ratings, height/weight, whether John Madden said “Big Ole” before the guy’s name and Pro Bowls to figure out whether our team made a good offensive line signing in free agency.
Of all the things that we have at our fingertips, the PFF grades stand alone as the piece of information that has given us the most power.
Having the capability to instantly put together a strong opinion on an offensive line free agent is vastly different from 15 years ago when you pretty much had to give the benefit of the doubt to the club.
The grades have opened our eyes to players who would have never gotten credit before (how many Brett Jones fans in the building?) and allowed us to objectively question decisions (again, should out Brett Jones fans).
Not everyone loves that.
“My issue is, I don’t see how they can grade my players when they don’t know what they’re being told,” Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer said earlier this season.
But with all 32 teams using the data, it’s hard to argue the validity of their findings.
“I think it’s impressive the work they do,” Gary Kubiak said of PFF. “Obviously, we have an analytics team here that we sit down with every Monday and go through our opponent and they give us information because we as coaches are so locked in to week-to-week and day-to-day. So, there’s a lot of information for us to look through.”
There are lots of different approaches to PFF grades and data within the league but arguments over the validity of using grades as an evaluation tool probably died when NBC Sports started putting them on the player’s headshot on Sunday Night Football.
They’re mainstream now. That doesn’t mean PFF’s offensive grades are well understood.
How does PFF evaluate run and pass blocking? How do pressure stats play into the equation? What context is required? Why do coaches sometimes view the evaluations differently?
I got together with PFF senior analyst Steve Palazzolo to learn more about how the grades are made and how we can better use them during this free agency period…
Don’t lose
The first thing you need to understand when pulling up a lineman’s PFF pass blocking grade is that it’s telling you how often each lineman gets beaten and how badly they were beaten.
The PFF grading system, which evaluates every play from a minus-2.0 to plus-2.0 scale and then translates it to the 0-100 number you see on stat pages, doesn’t use the plus side when grading pass blocking.
“The big thing is in pass protection when they came up with it was ‘we’re going to focus on not losing more than winning,’” Palazzolo said via Zoom on Friday. “I think our data has actually backed that up 15 years later — that the most important thing for offensive linemen [in pass protection] is to not lose. We focus on the losses.”
An important facet of the grades to understand is that they hold everyone to the same standard of not getting beat. Whether it’s Joe Thomas or Joe Schmo and whether they’re facing Lawrence Taylor or Lawrence of Arabia isn’t part of the equation. The idea is that the job in pass protection is the same for everyone on the line: Keep the QB clean.
“I’ve been in many meetings with coaches and they will say, ‘Well I can’t ask 78 to make that block,’” Palazzolo said. “We don’t see 78… we just say, ‘He tried to make a backside cutoff, he failed or you were one-on-one in pass protection against Khalil Mack and you either won or you lost and how quickly did you lose?’”
That last part — “how quickly did you lose?” — is worth keeping in mind when studying grades. The ways in which the player loses do matter.
“There’s a difference between a quick loss in 1.8 seconds where the quarterback is immediately under pressure versus one that happens a little bit later and you kind of lose the block where you don’t sustain it long enough versus a holding penalty,” Palazzolo said. “So everything is weighted. They have different ranges of bad.”
Here’s some examples of how a result might be graded:
0.0 = Lineman keeps pass rusher from getting past him
Minus-0.5 = Lineman holds onto a block but gets pushed back into the QB
Minus-1.0: Defender gets past the lineman after some engagement
Minus-1.5: Defender blows past the lineman in under two seconds
Minus-2.0: Defender blows past the lineman in under two seconds and lineman commits a holding penalty
The concept of only focusing on the L’s isn’t exactly how every offensive line coach around the NFL would approach evaluation. Teams would have more specific techniques they want executed and they are grading players within the confines of their team, not always in relation to the rest of the league.
“An offensive line coach trying to evaluate whether you did what we asked you to do in the scheme or it’s a plus or minus for a lot of teams, sometimes they have different layers of plus-plus or minus-minus but it’s all in relation to their own team in expectations,” Palazzolo said.
So as we look at guards on the free agent market like New England’s Joe Thuney (73.1 out of 100 grade) and New York’s Kevin Zeitler (68.7 grade), we can get a sense from their 14th and 23rd ranked pass blocking grades that they would get beaten far less often than 2020 Vikings starter Dakota Dozier (36.7 grade), who ranked 60th of 60.
Of course, we can’t end our judgements right there.
Sacks, pressures, context
Breaking news: Blocking for Tom Brady is different than blocking for Russell Wilson.
How do we deal with this problem when using PFF data?
Palazzolo says to focus on the grades more than the pressure numbers because they attempt to take the quarterback out of the equation.
“We will give a downgrade when you lose in two seconds even if there isn’t a pressure,” Palazzolo said. “Tom Brady protected his offensive linemen from getting pressure stats but didn’t protect them from our grade. On the other hand, Russell Wilson sit in the pocket — we see DeShaun Watson do it, we see Aaron Rodgers do it — we see them sit in the pocket forever and we’re not expecting the offensive linemen to hold his block for three or four seconds. If the defensive lineman comes off his block and gets in the quarterback’s face, we don’t charge it to the lineman or downgrade him.”
That means we should assume generally that free agent offensive linemen who are brought to Minnesota would give up more QB pressures than when they played for a quick-throwing QB. We should also expect that they have somewhere in the ballpark of the same performance as their previous location.
“The sack is very much on the quarterback,” Palazzolo said. “Once the lineman misses his block, whether it becomes a sack, a hit, a hurry or nothing is all on the quarterback, receivers, defensive backs, it’s outside of the offensive lineman’s control.”
Pressure numbers tell us how much the individual lineman’s losses hurt the quarterback. In Dozier’s case, he had the fourth most pressures allowed among all linemen in the NFL. Translated: With Cousins holding the ball longer than the average QB, Dozier getting beat more than any other lineman was quite damaging to the Vikings’ passing game. Maybe with Ben Roethlisberger it wouldn’t have been as harmful.
As we attempt to further understand what the grades are telling us, there’s some common sense context and eye test that should be added as best we can.
The common sense part is that a lineman’s quality of competition matters and that athletes generally deal with ups and downs in their performance. For example, if Riley Reiff faced Robert Quinn instead of Khalil Mack when the Vikings played against the Bears, he’s extremely likely to have better grades in those games than if he went against Mack. Any guard who plays in the NFC West is probably getting destroyed twice a year by Aaron Donald. PFF does not factor the pass rusher schedule.
They do have the capability to break down rushers by situation — though that data isn’t publicly available. Palazzolo used Reiff as an example of a lineman whose pass blocking grades might appear better than they are because he thrives in advantageous situations but struggles when pass rushers can pin their ears back.
“When you break down the construction of it, he’s below average in stable stuff that’s a little bit more difficult,” Palazzolo said. “He’s not good at what we call ‘true pass sets’ when you take out play-action, when you take out three-step drops, he’s below average but his pass blocking grade on play-action and three-step drops is above average. He kind of cheats the system a little bit. He’s good at the stuff that’s easy, he’s not good at the stuff that’s difficult.”
The trouble when analyzing an O-line signing is trying to take apart the grade when sometimes players are just inconsistent for reasons we can’t explain. Even in his prime Joe Mauer hit .347 one year and .293 another year. That happens with linemen too.
Single seasons can be small samples, but on the whole Palazzolo said that offensive line grades are among the most predictive because they have so many gradable plays unlike a cornerback or safety who might only actually be involved in a handful of plays per game.
Run blocking and pancakes
With run blocking, the plus side of the scale comes into play.
Palazzolo explains:
The positives: “Run blocking plus-0.5 you’re winning the gap, you’re moving the guy a little bit. Plus-1 you’re really moving a guy, destroying a guy off the ball. The plus-1.5 and plus-2.0 block exist but they exist in high school. We give them out but we don’t give out many. You’ll see a handful per year. It exists but when a Division-I recruit faces a 150-pound defensive tackle in high school and he blocks him out of the stadium.”
The negatives: “Letting a guy cross your face and lose your gap or similar to pass protection you get whooped off the line and the guy gets completely behind you. Holding penalties are generally minus-1.”
Similar to the distribution of pass blocks by situation, we have to pay attention to the home runs and strikeouts in run blocking.
“One of the most interesting things is that the NFL gets attractive to really good blocks,” Palazzolo said. “They get attracted to pancakes and when you crush a guy and they tend to forget negative plays.”
“Teams get fooled by single plays more than they should.”
Palazzolo compares guards to quarterbacks. Jameis Winston has lots of good and lots of bad. Alex Smith doesn’t have wow plays or throw bad picks. Some guards blow people off the ball and then whiff on the next play. Some guards do not lose very often. They might have similar overall grades even if their playing styles are different.
We’re going to need more common sense and eye test to figure out how each player’s style fits with the team.
What does it mean for this year’s free agent class?
Last year in free agency, seven lineman landed average annual values of money than $10 million. Here’s what their 2019 PFF grades looked like:
As you can see, some of the highest paid free agents in last year’s class graded highly but not everyone.
Four linemen who made under $4 million AAV — tackle Kelvin Beachum (67.1), Mike Remmers (64.1), Demar Dotson (70.8) and Greg Van Roten (65.6) — had average or better grades for a much lower price than players like Flowers, Fant and Peat.
At guard and tackle this offseason, you will similarly find great players with high grades like Trent Williams, who was PFF’s No. 1 tackle last season, and Joe Thuney, one of the NFL’s highest rated guard for multiple seasons. Those guys won’t be overlooked by the league.
But there are those who might not get attention but have decent grades like Rick Wagner (78.2), Beachum (69.0), guard Oday Aboushi (66.6) and guard Matt Feiler (65.9). Others like Kevin Zeitler (65.6) or Gabe Jackson (63.7) seem primed to get overpaid.
As always, there will be under-the-radar free agents and overrated free agents. It’s easier to pinpoint them these days.
That may be the best way that PFF grades can be used in the offseason: They can give us an indication of whether a team overpaid or found a diamond in the rough. That’s a heck of a lot more than we used to have.
Support the businesses that support Purple Insider by clicking below to check out Sotastick’s Minnesota sports inspired merchandise:
The last paragraph hits it on the head. It's much better to have some information than none, and there is a benefit to using that information to assess if a contract represents good ROI.
PFF does the best it can, but it's problematic to try and compare players given the wide differences in opponents and responsibilities. The key benefit is being able to ask "did this player do his job last year" which the rating tells us, and then consider how much of that is on him vs being exposed or hung out to dry by the scheme (e.g., seeing the difference with Rhodes no longer being asked to play man). Unfortunately with Dozier it's pretty clear the problem is that he can't block NFL players.
Good afternoon Matthew loved the read. I apologize for taking this a bit of a different direction. If you had a 'random comment section' I would put my thoughts there. I just heard that the MN Vikings are finalists in the Shaquill Griffin... Considering he's 25 had a solid 3rd year (after two dismal years, I can understand the Vikings would like him on the team... that said (in a very kind and unemotional way). A FREEGIN CORNERBACK FIRST THOUGHT IN FREE AGENCY ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR EVER LIVING MIND!#$*%^(@ (sorry for the brief out of body experience). Quite honestly, if we do not move on an Offensive Lineman as a top priority, Zimmer needs to be sent to some other team or back to a training camp for Head Coaches that emphasizes the importance of a good to great O-line to reach a Superbowl in a passing league particularly when you have a marginally mobile, let's just qualify cousins as ambulatory, QB who's analytics drop faster than the odds of Kelly Holcomb returning to the NFL, when he's pressured. My god man, he has Barr coming back, Kendrix still there, Pierce coming back and Hunter likely restructured... He still has Smith, Dantzler, and Gladney. The last two improved as the season went on last year. IF they get Griffin on a very good deal I might relax but they have to shore up that O-line...
Comparatively, after listing the defense above, that admittedly needs some work particularly an edge rusher and a 3 tech, look at the 0-line... One lineman worth spit, O'Neil who is rock solid then what? The rest of the line is incredibly substandard. No matter how good you attempt to make your defense it won't matter if the QB is dead and you can't score points. Right Tackle likely switched to left tackle and who knows what the impact will be. Right guard, barely serviceable might improve to below average with another year, Center we hope improves with better guard play on both sides... where does that come from? Left guard, we have no left guard, Left tackle, we have no left tackle so... LETS GO GET A CORNERBACK!!! Zimmer should go and coach Rugby.
I agree the defense needs attention through PASS RUSHERS... I don't think Griffin would qualify. As far as trends go, based on his play so far https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=shaquille+griffin+injury&docid=608022186400116216&mid=AC15B7679858E1460778AC15B7679858E1460778&view=detail&FORM=VIRE will give you the overview. I understand the desire to give him a try with Zimmer coaching but the priority drives me crazy. It's bad enough to be sentenced to Kirk Cousins instead of a legitimate rebuild, failure to fix the O-line will definitely cause me to rant.