Excited to announce that Rivals has partnered with Pro Football Focus (PFF) to provide advanced analytics for BirdsUp.com and the rest of the Rivals Network. I want to give everyone a taste of what will be possible with the data PFF provides for us.
Below is the top five graded players on offense and defense after week one as well as other graphics and information. We will be incorporating more of the PFF data into our work in the near future. Stay tuned.
NOTE: We are making this piece free, but will be made premium moving forward.
Below is an explanation from PFF on how the grading scale works:
HOW DOES IT WORK?
On every play, a PFF analyst will grade each player on a scale of -2 to +2 according to what he did on the play.
At one end of the scale you have a catastrophic game-ending interception or pick-six from a quarterback, and at the other a perfect deep bomb into a tight window in a critical game situation, with the middle of that scale being 0-graded, or ‘expected’ plays that are neither positive nor negative.
Each game is also graded by a second PFF analyst independent of the first, and those grades are compared by a third, Senior Analyst, who rules on any differences between the two. These grades are verified by the Pro Coach Network, a group of former and current NFL coaches with over 700 combined years of NFL coaching experience, to get them as accurate as they can be.
From there, the grades are normalized to better account for game situation; this ranges from where a player lined up to the dropback depth of the quarterback or the length of time he had the ball in his hand and everything in between. They are finally converted to a 0-100 scale and appear in our Player Grades tool.
Each week, grades are subject to change while we run through our extensive review process including All-22 tape runs and coaching audit, so you may notice discrepancies among grades published in earlier articles compared with those in the Player Grades tool until grade lock each week.
Takeaway:
Grundy graded out at 54.6 after week one and although he struggled some he was able to post a better overall grade than D.J. Gillins who came in at a grade of 28.3. Room for improvement for both of UTSA’s quarterbacks.
Takeaway:
UTSA really struggled passing the ball grading out at 40.6, but surprisingly enough graded out better rushing at 58.3.
Something that stood out to me was UTSA’s pass blocking grade which graded out at 67.9, yet the passing grade was much lower than the blocking grade which leads me to believe that the quarterbacks might have held on to the ball a little too long. Which validates what Frank Wilson said post game last week.
