Weekly PFF Hate

[TheElectricCompany]

As mentioned before, Josh and statistics historically don't mix, which caused years of takes that JA was trash (I'm guilty).  The last two games have been uncharted territory.

 

If he continues to play like a top 5 QB, the statistics will match up fairly quickly.

 

The 'PFF is ####" takes are pretty dramatic, as they've' clearly shown value to NFL teams. Data is only part of player analysis, and you have to known when to take it with a grain, or gallon, of salt.

Edited September 24, 2020 by TheElectricCompany

[QCity]

20 minutes ago, thebandit27 said:

only to see ridiculous rankings that put an absolutely 💩show performance ahead of a 417 yard, 4 TD day?

 

 

 

I'm not saying PFF is infallible, I'm merely trying to explain their methodology -- and I understand that may be nigh impossible to some here. You can't use 3 or 4 stats to discount their conclusions. We already have metrics to compare QB's based on throwing stats like passer rating and QBR.

 

I'll illustrate this one more time using an extreme example, and then I'll bow out to let the PFF bashing party resume.

 

Let's say QB #1 goes 0/20 for 0 yards, 0 TD 0 INT. Every single pass is absolutely perfect - on time, hits each receiver right between the numbers into both hands, but is dropped. 20 dropped passes!

 

QB #2 goes 14/20 for 200 yards, 2 TD 1 INT.

 

Yup, PFF is going to grade QB #1 higher, even though he didn't complete a single pass! He had ZERO yards throwing! Are they nuts?!? Their rationale is, "Look, QB #1 did everything perfectly, get him some receivers that can catch and that line would be 20/20 for 300 yards 3TD 0INT.

 

Again, I'm not saying this is the best way to compare players, but you can't point at stats to claim their method is hogwash because it's really not a results-driven methodology.

[GoBills808]

Just now, QCity said:

 

I'm not saying PFF is infallible, I'm merely trying to explain their methodology -- and I understand that may be nigh impossible to some here. You can't use 3 or 4 stats to discount their conclusions. We already have metrics to compare QB's based on throwing stats like passer rating and QBR.

 

I'll illustrate this one more time using an extreme example, and then I'll bow out to let the PFF bashing party resume.

 

Let's say QB #1 goes 0/20 for 0 yards, 0 TD 0 INT. Every single pass is absolutely perfect - on time, hits each receiver right between the numbers into both hands, but is dropped. 20 dropped passes!

 

QB #2 goes 14/20 for 200 yards, 2 TD 1 INT.

 

Yup, PFF is going to grade QB #1 higher, even though he didn't complete a single pass! He had ZERO yards throwing! Are they nuts?!? Their rationale is, "Look, QB #1 did everything perfectly, get him some receivers that can catch and that line would be 20/20 for 300 yards 3TD 0INT.

 

Again, I'm not saying this is the best way to compare players, but you can't point at stats to claim their method is hogwash because it's really not a results-driven methodology.

Allen had the highest drop% in the league last year, did he score well w/PFF?

[eball]

50 minutes ago, thebandit27 said:

What if I’ve read their contrived nonsense for years and years, about how “no no you see, NFL coaches consistently realize how PFF is right and they’re wrong”, only to see ridiculous rankings that put an absolutely 💩show performance ahead of a 417 yard, 4 TD day?

 

Should I still read yet another 💩piece from them?

I don’t know why you’re complaining. After all, Bruce Gradkowski reviews all of the QB ratings. 🤦🏻‍♂️
 

If you’ve ever heard Bruce Gradkowski on the radio you know why this not a compliment. 

[thebandit27]

27 minutes ago, QCity said:

 

I'm not saying PFF is infallible, I'm merely trying to explain their methodology -- and I understand that may be nigh impossible to some here. You can't use 3 or 4 stats to discount their conclusions. We already have metrics to compare QB's based on throwing stats like passer rating and QBR.

 

I'll illustrate this one more time using an extreme example, and then I'll bow out to let the PFF bashing party resume.

 

Let's say QB #1 goes 0/20 for 0 yards, 0 TD 0 INT. Every single pass is absolutely perfect - on time, hits each receiver right between the numbers into both hands, but is dropped. 20 dropped passes!

 

QB #2 goes 14/20 for 200 yards, 2 TD 1 INT.

 

Yup, PFF is going to grade QB #1 higher, even though he didn't complete a single pass! He had ZERO yards throwing! Are they nuts?!? Their rationale is, "Look, QB #1 did everything perfectly, get him some receivers that can catch and that line would be 20/20 for 300 yards 3TD 0INT.

 

Again, I'm not saying this is the best way to compare players, but you can't point at stats to claim their method is hogwash because it's really not a results-driven methodology.

And if their grades came within a light year of matching the eye test, that’d be one thing.

 

They don’t match either the raw stats or the eye test a huge amount of the time.

 

20 minutes ago, eball said:

I don’t know why you’re complaining. After all, Bruce Gradkowski reviews all of the QB ratings. 🤦🏻‍♂️
 

If you’ve ever heard Bruce Gradkowski on the radio you know why this not a compliment. 

I interviewed Grads when he was in college. Good dude honestly.

[K-9]

32 minutes ago, GoBills808 said:

Allen had the highest drop% in the league last year, did he score well w/PFF?

According to other stat compiler,  Allen was the most impacted by dropped passes. But not according to PFF, who had Wentz, Brady, and Prescott at 1,2, and 3. 

[GoBills808]

Just now, K-9 said:

According to other stat compiler,  Allen was the most impacted by dropped passes. But not according to PFF, who had Wentz, Brady, and Prescott at 1,2, and 3. 

Ah yes of course.

[eball]

34 minutes ago, thebandit27 said:

I interviewed Grads when he was in college. Good dude honestly.

 

Oh, he sounds like an incredibly good dude.  I’m talking about the mental sharpness...

[Ed_Formerly_of_Roch]

2 hours ago, QCity said:

 

Excellent article that was pretty insightful. Allen had more positive plays than any other QB last week, but he takes a slight hit for negative plays. “When you look at our data historically, the positively graded throws tend to fluctuate more than the negatives,” Palazzolo said. “It’s somewhat intuitive. A quarterback controls his negatives more than his positives."

 

I thought it was fascinating that Mike McCarthy met with them to go over Rodgers' 5TD 0 INT game and actually came away in agreement with PFF.

 

The day Nick Foles threw for over 400 yards, seven touchdowns and zero interceptions for Kelly’s Eagles, his PFF grade was on par with Allen’s from Sunday. And that was mostly a result of how open the receivers were due to their own talent and Kelly’s scheme.

 

So the team at PFF walked Kelly through their process. Kelly pointed out observations PFF graders made that he and his staff would never look at, but that just meant they did things differently. Once Kelly realized how much they knew and the value of the information they had, he became an investor in the company.

 

The other two things I thought were rather insightful was the comment that:

 

The thing that is separating Josh Allen’s grade from Russell Wilson or Aaron Rodgers, who have similar numbers through two games, are the turnover-worthy plays.

 

Also that the Bills are 5th highest in the league in yards after catch.  So that is something that the receivers get credit for, but not the QB.  Who knows how many yards that actually was, but may have taken Allen down from 417 yards to 325 or so, not a bad day, but not in the stratosphere either.

[Ed_Formerly_of_Roch]

2 hours ago, thebandit27 said:

What if I’ve read their contrived nonsense for years and years, about how “no no you see, NFL coaches consistently realize how PFF is right and they’re wrong”, only to see ridiculous rankings that put an absolutely 💩show performance ahead of a 417 yard, 4 TD day?

 

Should I still read yet another 💩piece from them?

 

So did you watch every pass likely in an All 22 format of both Bills game and the Jets game to come to your conclusion?  And did you have a 2nd person using the identical criteria that you use also review your conclusions?

 

2 hours ago, Just Joshin' said:

I did and learned that their methodology is flawed.  If Allen rifles a throw into tight coverage and makes the play, it is a negative because it could have been intercepted.  Feels good on first review.

 

Now let's put some context:  if he completes a checkdown on third down the throw counts more than the above throw to convert the 3rd and keep the drive going.  He made the throw and it was not almost intercepted, here is a cookie.  Team lost but nice throw.

 

In the case above what if Allen knew it would be close but he also knew he had the strength and touch to make the play.  So he gets punished?

 

Playing the "what if" game is a losers analysis.  Over the course of time those things will even out.  If he is reckless then it will show up in the stats.  if he is successful, it will show up in the stats. 

 

Context is also important on when in the game the plays occur:  is it garbage time with a prevent?  Does that score positive points vs a hard fought first half?

 

So back to @thebandit27 question: do you consider Darnold's performance better than Allen's last week?

 

I read the article, I didn't see where it stated that.  What it said was the pass into the flat that could have been intercepted for a pick six hurt him.

 

The article also talked about how they have a small number of people who do the evaluations and are all well trained in the system.  Every evaluation is reviewed by a 2nd person before publishing and QB performance is reviewed by a third person.  They also are using the same identical criteria for every game.

 

They don't have bias as opposed to all the fans here which again is short for fanatic.   One thing I'm certain of every person who posts on this site is about 100 times more bias than a company that is doing this for a living.   It's amazing how anytime a thread praises the Bills, that guy is a genius, he gets it, but talk bad about the Bills and that article is worthless and they are all idiots.  But that's what happens when you read every post wearing Bills colored glasses.

 

 

[GoBills808]

It's almost as if they stand to lose a ton of credibility if Allen is actually a good quarterback

[Hapless Bills Fan]

5 hours ago, Ed_Formerly_of_Roch said:

Just read an article on the Athletic about the PFF system, sounds like Fairburn contracted them to understand why.   Not endorsing or complaining,  just summarizing some of the points given of how their grades are determined:

(....)

So to some of the points above, is their grading system secret? no

 

Sorry @Ed_Formerly_of_Roch, but it's secret.

 

After reading that article (or perusing any other publically available information on the Interwebs Anywhere), could you watch a game and reproduce their grade?

Could I?  Could the Analytics department of the Eagles?

 

The answer is "No".  They have proprietary criteria on which they grade each play.  Therefore, Yes.  Their grading system is, in fact, secret.  Think it isn't?

OK - calculate their grade for yourself, or even just explain (in detail, play by play) how to do it.  You can't.  You don't know the details.

 

Reading an article with vague criteria that really doesn't add much info over their own link https://www.pff.com/news/pro-how-pff-grades-quarterback-play does not mean their grading system is not secret.  It just means they're willing to try to "sell" it by offering an explanation in vague, general terms.

 

The real question is whether it identifies actual winning QB play?  And the answer seems to be "um no, not really"  There's not a football knowledgeable human on the planet who would argue that Josh Allen wasn't key and integral to the Bills win in Miami, or against the Jets.  Ditto with regard to his level of play being higher than several of the QB the PFF system rated higher.

 

'nuf said.

[thebandit27]

43 minutes ago, Ed_Formerly_of_Roch said:

 

So did you watch every pass likely in an All 22 format of both Bills game and the Jets game to come to your conclusion?  And did you have a 2nd person using the identical criteria that you use also review your conclusions?

 

 

I read the article, I didn't see where it stated that.  What it said was the pass into the flat that could have been intercepted for a pick six hurt him.

 

The article also talked about how they have a small number of people who do the evaluations and are all well trained in the system.  Every evaluation is reviewed by a 2nd person before publishing and QB performance is reviewed by a third person.  They also are using the same identical criteria for every game.

 

They don't have bias as opposed to all the fans here which again is short for fanatic.   One thing I'm certain of every person who posts on this site is about 100 times more bias than a company that is doing this for a living.   It's amazing how anytime a thread praises the Bills, that guy is a genius, he gets it, but talk bad about the Bills and that article is worthless and they are all idiots.  But that's what happens when you read every post wearing Bills colored glasses.

 

 

Yes, I watch the all-22. Every week. Twice actually.

 

But that isn’t really the point. If your premise here is “but they have a formula”, then my response is “well I have my eyes”.

 

And I can absolutely, 100% guarantee that 32 out of 32 head coaches would agree that Allen’s week 2 performance was a great deal better than Darnold’s.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

49 minutes ago, Ed_Formerly_of_Roch said:

I read the article, I didn't see where it stated that.  What it said was the pass into the flat that could have been intercepted for a pick six hurt him.

 

They have a 'statistic' they tout (that is part of their QB rating system) called "turnover worthy" or "interceptable" passes meaning passes that could have been intercepted but weren't.  It would not just be that errant pass to Brown that hit a Miami player in the hands - it would include passes like the shot to Brown who was flanked by two defenders, the early sideline pass to Knox in last year's Pittsburgh game - passes that Josh and his receiver both have faith he can get there before the D reacts, but that score as "turnover worthy" to PFF.

[HappyDays]

1 hour ago, Ed_Formerly_of_Roch said:

Also that the Bills are 5th highest in the league in yards after catch.  So that is something that the receivers get credit for, but not the QB.

 

Great example of why their system is useless.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

1 minute ago, HappyDays said:

Great example of why their system is useless.

 

Yep.  Considering that it's been a big (and fair!) knock on various QB that while they're completing passes, their placement doesn't allow the receiver to rack up YAC.

[4merper4mer]

5 hours ago, QCity said:

 

I'm not saying PFF is infallible, I'm merely trying to explain their methodology -- and I understand that may be nigh impossible to some here. You can't use 3 or 4 stats to discount their conclusions. We already have metrics to compare QB's based on throwing stats like passer rating and QBR.

 

I'll illustrate this one more time using an extreme example, and then I'll bow out to let the PFF bashing party resume.

 

Let's say QB #1 goes 0/20 for 0 yards, 0 TD 0 INT. Every single pass is absolutely perfect - on time, hits each receiver right between the numbers into both hands, but is dropped. 20 dropped passes!

 

QB #2 goes 14/20 for 200 yards, 2 TD 1 INT.

 

Yup, PFF is going to grade QB #1 higher, even though he didn't complete a single pass! He had ZERO yards throwing! Are they nuts?!? Their rationale is, "Look, QB #1 did everything perfectly, get him some receivers that can catch and that line would be 20/20 for 300 yards 3TD 0INT.

 

Again, I'm not saying this is the best way to compare players, but you can't point at stats to claim their method is hogwash because it's really not a results-driven methodology.

Now I understand how Tre White is the 18th best CB in the NFL.  Thanks.

[Warcodered]

 

[BruceVilanch]

This is from the Athletic so you gotta pay, but they actually get into the weeds on how they grade players, I still think it's garbage but here is a snippet about Josh Allen:

 

If the grading system simply plucked from the stats, it wouldn’t be much of a system at all. Those who are trained in Pro Football Focus’ grading system get a 350-page manual on what to look for at each position. Players are assigned a score on each play up to +2 or as low as -2 in increments of 0.5. The scores are determined by attempting to isolate the quarterback’s play from those around him. A quarterback still gets credit for a good throw if a receiver drops a pass. Conversely, if a defensive back drops an interception, the quarterback is still penalized for the throw. While it’s subjective in some ways, it’s not guess work. They’re basing a grade on having watched thousands of plays across the league over many years.

 

Let’s use Allen as an example. He threw for 417 yards and four touchdowns. He pushed the ball down the field and made some challenging throws. If Stefon Diggs is running wide open, Diggs might get more of the credit for a big play in the passing game than Allen would in PFF’s grading system. On Sunday, Allen had two passes that were nearly intercepted. One would have been an easy pick six. Those dropped his grade slightly.

“We grade positives and negatives,” Palazzolo said. “He has more positively graded plays through two weeks than any other quarterback. It’s easy to remember those and forget the negatives. Because through two weeks, the negatives just haven’t come back to bite him.

“I don’t think people understand how we do it, because we’re just grading production and how you played. We’re not grading velocity on the ball necessarily or knee bend by a left tackle. So a lot of people can’t comprehend it.”

 

 

[1ManRaid]

"Those who are trained in Pro Football Focus’ grading system get a 350-page manual on what to look for at each position. Players are assigned a score on each play up to +2 or as low as -2 in increments of 0.5."

 

Thats the only new information.  And why don't they factor things like velocity?  That's an important weapon he uses to be more effective.  Firing balls through tight windows can be huge and should be scored highly rather than docked for being "risky".