PFF's take on Week 1: guards struggle, defense dominates

Top offensive grades:

WR Doug Baldwin, 80.9

RT Gary Gilliam, 79.8

C Justin Britt, 77.1

QB Russell Wilson, 76.5

TE Luke Willson, 71.7

https://www.profootballfocus.com/pro-mi ... in-opener/

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Good to see that, despite allowing the sack that injured Wilson, Gilliam has a strong game overall. Britt was also strong. Sowell was average. Guards Glowinski and Webb were just terrible in run blocking and pass pro against one of the stronger defensive lines they will face. Suh crushed us with four run stops, three hurries, and a sack. Phillips also had his way. Their DEs were just average, which is a testament to the above average protection of OTs Gilliam and Sowell.

Meanwhile, the defense absolutely dominated . . . .

Top defensive grades:

CB DeShawn Shead, 90.7

CB Jeremy Lane, 85.7

DT Jarran Reed, 81.5

CB Richard Sherman, 81.0

DE Michael Bennett, 80.1

Seahawks secondary impressive in opener

The standout performance from Seattle’s defense came from the vaunted “Legion of Boom.” Three of the top-five graded defenders came from the secondary, and Kam Chancellor was not far behind. Sherman was only thrown at once, and allowed only 2 yards on the catch. Shead was thrown at three times, allowing only one catch and no yards. Michael Bennett helped them out immensely with four pressures, one hit, and a sack.

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Tannehill was under pressure on 48.5 percent of his dropbacks—the highest rate for all QBs in Week 1 through Sunday.

Wow I actually agree with these grades for once.

WRT to pressure rate, a lot of that has to do with how long the QB holds the ball. If a QB holds the ball 6 seconds and isn't pressured, that will score the same as a QB who gets the ball out in 1.5 seconds and isn't pressured. It's not useless information, but it's important to remember the context. It would be nice if they also tracked the number of times a QB held the ball 4+ seconds before being pressured.

That's really cool, thanks for that. Someone on one of the threads mentioned something negative about our DC and I'm like, are you kidding? Barely over 200 yds of offense and 10 pts? Do that all year and we are the best NFL defense of all time.

One thing I am curious about is Miami's defensive backfield alignments. There seemed to be many times RW couldn't find anybody open and threw the ball out of bounds.

Are you going to be doing any analysis on that kearly?

kearly":2c5wh0d0 said:

Wow I actually agree with these grades for once.

WRT to pressure rate, a lot of that has to do with how long the QB holds the ball. If a QB holds the ball 6 seconds and isn't pressured, that will score the same as a QB who gets the ball out in 1.5 seconds and isn't pressured. It's not useless information, but it's important to remember the context. It would be nice if they also tracked the number of times a QB held the ball 4+ seconds before being pressured.

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Not sure I agree with the Sowell grade as average. He had 2 holding penalties and looked like he was struggling against Mario Williams. Once Williams went out, he looked pretty good.

Williams is a physical freak at 298 lbs and ran a 4.8 second 40 out of college. There's not really anyone I can think of that matches his physical profile that we're going to see, so the question is, does Sowell match up better against smaller, quicker RDE's that we're going to see ? (I'm thinking Robert Quinn here).

Jarran Reed was very impressive yesterday!!! The defense as a whole, played lights out-despite the horrid play of Earl Thomas. In fact, if Earl had played an 'average' game, it would have been a shut out. That is the one positive I got from this game. The D showed up in a big way.

Those grades confirm what I saw as well - Deshawn Shead had a monster game. He was covering his man stride for stride on seemingly every play, laying the wood left and right.

The whole defense was playing some really physical football, at times imposing their will on the Dolphins offense. It's going to be another great season if they can keep that up.

Hawks46":1v7ero81 said:

kearly":1v7ero81 said:

Wow I actually agree with these grades for once.

WRT to pressure rate, a lot of that has to do with how long the QB holds the ball. If a QB holds the ball 6 seconds and isn't pressured, that will score the same as a QB who gets the ball out in 1.5 seconds and isn't pressured. It's not useless information, but it's important to remember the context. It would be nice if they also tracked the number of times a QB held the ball 4+ seconds before being pressured.

Click to expand...

Not sure I agree with the Sowell grade as average. He had 2 holding penalties and looked like he was struggling against Mario Williams. Once Williams went out, he looked pretty good.

Williams is a physical freak at 298 lbs and ran a 4.8 second 40 out of college. There's not really anyone I can think of that matches his physical profile that we're going to see, so the question is, does Sowell match up better against smaller, quicker RDE's that we're going to see ? (I'm thinking Robert Quinn here).

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IMO, Quinn's gonna own him. Hope I'm wrong.

LOB outside of Earl was fabulous yesterday.

Lane played really well yesterday. I'm glad we kept him!

Meh I hate these grades most of the time. I watched Clark specifically and he had a monster game as well. Played very well. I think Ifedi is going to make a huge difference once he's able to go. I'm not too worried. Miami rivals the Rams on the front 4 and most teams aren't going to be running out a Suh, Williams, Wake etc Dline at us.

Cassius Marsh had a few really nice plays as well. :2thumbs: