PFF Offensive Lineman grades

[NFSeahawks]

I pulled the trigger after much thought because I'm a nerd and like looking at numbers to compare players. While I acknowledge this is not the only way to assess talent or dissect how someone is playing I believe it is helpful at getting a better understanding of where each player stands.

I know some others would be interested in seeing this so I'm going to provide the overall grade, pass protection grade and run blocking grade for the Seahawks thus far from PFF.

There are 79 players with enough snaps to be ranked at the tackle spot, we will only need to look at the bottom 8 of those 79 players to assess the Seahawks tackle spot as of right now. I included Breno because that's fun.

Ignore the first number as it's simply their jersey number, second number is overall grade, third number is pass protection and fourth number is run block.

Interesting fact: This was updated right before I posted and yes our players scores got lower, lol. It's not funny but you know... RED is bad!

Rankings are as follows:

Blue Chip
Great
Good
Average
Below Average
Poor

Tackles

Also this graphic of Okung makes a lot of sense to me...

Sowell:
Overall: 39.1 (Poor)
Pass Blocking: 39.9 (Poor)
Run Blocking: 41.2 (Poor)

Gilliam:
Overall: 33.8 (Poor)
Pass Blocking: 34.7 (Poor)
Run Blocking: 36.9 (Poor)

Fant:
Overall: 32.8 (Poor)
Pass Blocking: 33.2 (Poor)
Run Blocking: 38.7 (Poor)

Rees:
Overall: 49.3 (Poor)
Pass Bocking: 73.0 (League average)
Run Blocking: 40.3 (Poor)

Webb:
Same as above...
----

Guards

Unfortunately, it doesn't get much better here. Out of 81 guards in the league, guess who's ranked last?

Glowinski:
Overall: 68.6 (Below average)
Pass Blocking: 53.4 (Poor)
Run Blocking: 74.6 (League Average)

Ifedi:
Overall: 37.7 (Poor)
Pass Blocking: 30.2 (Poor)
Run Blocking: 54.3 (Poor)

---

Center

Britt:
Overall: 81.6 (Good)
Pass Protection: 79.2 (Good)
Run Blocking: 74.3 (League average)

Hunt:

Overall:72.8 (League average)
Pass Protection: 69.7 (League Average)
Run Blocking: 64.7 (Below Average)

For those interested Max Unger was ranked 15th, below Britt.
-----

So we have a center and maybe a guard, didn't realize how poorly Ifedi has been doing, worst in the league, yikes!

 

[FlyingGreg]

Ifedi looks to me like he is thinking too much. He looks slower and slower each game.

He has not been playing well. Might be the rookie wall.

 

[RussB]

Idefi started out real good but has regressed since. Dont know what is up with him.

 

[NFSeahawks]

Even as a rookie it's concerning to see him at last in the league for his position, hopefully he improves.

I would like to see Rees get some starts at tackle, since were doing this whole play everyone you have thing on the line.

 

[Seahawk_Dan]

Even as a rookie it's concerning to see him at last in the league for his position, hopefully he improves.

I would like to see Rees get some starts at tackle, since were doing this whole play everyone you have thing on the line.

Maybe Cable would like to suit up as well. Show the players how to play Oline, ya know?

 

[EverydayImRusselin]

Not that I disagree much with the premise of the OP, I just wanted to point out that PFF sucks for grading. I won't rehash it but suffice to say there are hundreds of articles available via google.

 

[Largent80]

So which teams have more than one player ranked in the top 25?

 

[brimsalabim]

Even as a rookie it's concerning to see him at last in the league for his position, hopefully he improves.

I would like to see Rees get some starts at tackle, since were doing this whole play everyone you have thing on the line.

Maybe Cable would like to suit up as well. Show the players how to play Oline, ya know?

I'd like to see Pete and John suit up and stand behind the line.

 

[NFSeahawks]

So which teams have more than one player ranked in the top 25?

The better question is which teams have A player in the top 25, I'll answer both for tackles:

One:

Washington
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Green Bay
Philadelphia
Tennessee
Dallas
New Orleans
Oakland
Atlanta
Pittsburgh
Baltimore
New England
Buffalo
Detroit
Indianapolis
Arizona
Houston
Tampa Bay

19/32

Two:
Washington
Philadelphia
Green Bay
New England
Tennessee
New Orleans

6/32

 

[Largent80]

So those numbers price my point about how hard it is to field a strong o line in this NFL era.

 

[Seahawk_Dan]

Even as a rookie it's concerning to see him at last in the league for his position, hopefully he improves.

I would like to see Rees get some starts at tackle, since were doing this whole play everyone you have thing on the line.

Maybe Cable would like to suit up as well. Show the players how to play Oline, ya know?

I'd like to see Pete and John suit up and stand behind the line.

If their noses getting bashed in behind this line gives them the hint to invest in it, instead of giving Kearse a payday, I say go for it.

You can pick up receivers off the street. We have seen time and time again, you cannot do the same with the offensive line.

 

[NFSeahawks]

So those numbers price my point about how hard it is to field a strong o line in this NFL era.

60% of NFL teams have at least one good tackle on their team, so I would venture to say it doesn't actually validate your point at all.

Lots of things are hard, it's the NFL.

However, that wasn't the point of me posting this, it was just for others to see how are line ranks from an individual standpoint.

:2thumbs:

 

[NFSeahawks]

Even as a rookie it's concerning to see him at last in the league for his position, hopefully he improves.

I would like to see Rees get some starts at tackle, since were doing this whole play everyone you have thing on the line.

Maybe Cable would like to suit up as well. Show the players how to play Oline, ya know?

I'd like to see Pete and John suit up and stand behind the line.

If their noses getting bashed in behind this line gives them the hint to invest in it, instead of giving Kearse a payday, I say go for it.

You can pick up receivers off the street. We have seen time and time again, you cannot do the same with the offensive line.

Oh on Kearse...

 

[Seahawk_Dan]

Oh on Kearse...

Ouch. Hope it was worth it.

 

[Popeyejones]

Not that I disagree much with the premise of the OP, I just wanted to point out that PFF sucks for grading. I won't rehash it but suffice to say there are hundreds of articles available via google.

The critiques about PFF basically amount to two things:

1) In order to create an advanced statistic you have to use formulas to assign values to things. This is a catch-all critique of any type of algorithmic deduction. If someone took that the time to show that PFF's formulas are objectively poorly weighting I'd be all for that, but just complaining about it is toothless as it's a complaint about the existence algorithmic deduction, not PFF.

2) There is subjective classification (i.e. "noise") in PFF's "objective" system.. Well, yeah, duh, this is also true practically the entire rest of the statistical world, be it in survey design, coding schema, response error, etc. People seem to believe that this is a death sentence for PFF rather than being a general observation about enumerating real world events. Also worth noting that the vast, vast majority of critiques of PFF comes from fans who don't like how their own players are scored (read: if "objectivity" is a problem with PFF we've really amassed the least objective accusers in the world to lobby the complaint).

All in all, PFF obviously isn't perfect and obviously could be better (that's true of all things), but I find the critiques of it to be really toothless.

For the critique not to be toothless it would have to successfully address the following two questions, IMO: 1) Is there something better we should be using, and if so, what is it?; 2) Do its flaws make it entirely useless or even damaging? I think that's an incredibly hard argument to make with a straight face (e.g. anyone want to stand up and argue PFF is wrong and the Seahawks Oline is actually really good?).


ASIDE #1: When critiquing PFF nobody really seems to mention that every team in the NFL uses a similar per-play +/-X grading scheme as part of their postmortem for each game. This is what coaches are talking about when they talk about guys "grading out well" during in-week press conferences. It's not like PFF is doing some zany thing off in the wild; they're doing essentially what every team in the NFL does also.

ASIDE #2: No surprise that the critiques of PFF are basically the same as the critiques of ESPN's QBR algorithm, as they're really just critiques of algorithms rather than specific critiques of those algorithms. QBR obviously has its problems too, but nobody ever mentions what it's good at: it's better at predicting winning than any quarterback stat that came before it. Unless people do the leg work to model winning as based on QB play in a better way, they're just yelling at clouds, IMO.

 

[RichNhansom]

Not that I disagree much with the premise of the OP, I just wanted to point out that PFF sucks for grading. I won't rehash it but suffice to say there are hundreds of articles available via google.

The critiques about PFF basically amount to two things:

1) In order to create an advanced statistic you have to use formulas to assign values to things. This is a catch-all critique of any type of algorithmic deduction. If someone took that the time to show that PFF's formulas are objectively poorly weighting I'd be all for that, but just complaining about it is toothless as it's a complaint about the existence algorithmic deduction, not PFF.

2) There is subjective classification (i.e. "noise") in PFF's "objective" system.. Well, yeah, duh, this is also true practically the entire rest of the statistical world, be it in survey design, coding schema, response error, etc. People seem to believe that this is a death sentence for PFF rather than being a general observation about enumerating real world events. Also worth noting that the vast, vast majority of critiques of PFF comes from fans who don't like how their own players are scored (read: if "objectivity" is a problem with PFF we've really amassed the least objective accusers in the world to lobby the complaint).

All in all, PFF obviously isn't perfect and obviously could be better (that's true of all things), but I find the critiques of it to be really toothless.

For the critique not to be toothless it would have to successfully address the following two questions, IMO: 1) Is there something better we should be using, and if so, what is it?; 2) Do its flaws make it entirely useless or even damaging? I think that's an incredibly hard argument to make with a straight face (e.g. anyone want to stand up and argue PFF is wrong and the Seahawks Oline is actually really good?).


ASIDE #1: When critiquing PFF nobody really seems to mention that every team in the NFL uses a similar per-play +/-X grading scheme as part of their postmortem for each game. This is what coaches are talking about when they talk about guys "grading out well" during in-week press conferences. It's not like PFF is doing some zany thing off in the wild; they're doing essentially what every team in the NFL does also.

ASIDE #2: No surprise that the critiques of PFF are basically the same as the critiques of ESPN's QBR algorithm, as they're really just critiques of algorithms rather than specific critiques of those algorithms. QBR obviously has its problems too, but nobody ever mentions what it's good at: it's better at predicting winning than any quarterback stat that came before it. Unless people do the leg work to model winning as based on QB play in a better way, they're just yelling at clouds, IMO.

I almost did the TLDR but before I ever do that I see who the poster is and in this case it's Popeye who has become an excellent poster on here lately.

Thanks for the post Popeye. Good post. Instead of TLDR I would give the WRA (would read again).

 

[cymatica]

Forget PFF, the o-line fails the eye test horribly. Against even mediocre fronts they have trouble, Wilson is the main reason we can even run the offense half the time. Should just move the pocket on every single pass play against good fronts

 

[Largent80]

The thing is, say you play like ass for a year, you get a top 10 pick, there is no guarantee that #1 there is a tackle worth taking there, or #2 that that tackle will even pan out.

Look at Robinson for the Rams, a super high pick who was benched in favor of Saffold.

There are a LARGE amount of teams with high picks on their lines that are not performing up to the standard of the pick. It has been well documented that colleges run the spread or air raid offense which are programs that are NOT condusive to produce NFL caliber OL players.

They don't put their hands on the ground and therefore lack the leverage needed to exceed at the next level. It is a hit and miss proposition, and your team has to suck to even get the chance to gamble on said player.

Do you like the Seahawk defense?.....If so, there is a reason its good. Continuity, and experience because those players got paid on their 2nd contracts and deservedly so.

The salary cap prevents teams from monopolizing on talent based on the deepness of the owners pocketbooks. Our owner has deeper pockets than all of them but we are held to the same standards as every other team.

You CAN'T have it all.

 

[xgeoff]

One thing I would point out is that these grades do not show whether a player is improving or not. It's just a rolling average. For example, Fant was awful in his first outing, but has gradually gotten better (till Tampa, unfortunately). It would be great to see the game-by-game grades but that subscription is pretty expensive.

 

[NFSeahawks]

One thing I would point out is that these grades do not show whether a player is improving or not. It's just a rolling average. For example, Fant was awful in his first outing, but has gradually gotten better (till Tampa, unfortunately). It would be great to see the game-by-game grades but that subscription is pretty expensive.

I would agree with this, it would be nice to see game by game updates on grades. You can do some of this manually if you take the time, I would be one of those people.