PFF's secret superstar

Huge fan of Siliga. @BradyFTW! and launched the Siliga fan club back in 2013.

If he had returned to college for his senior year he'd have been an early round pick. He was paired with Star Lotulelei and in my opinion was overshadowed but from a talent perspective and now performance he is every bit the player.

ausbacker said:

The whole Tom Brady is **** is one of the many drivers pushing my disdain for PFF.

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They named Kareem Mackenzie the best player in football one year and claimed Brady wasn't elite last season. The reason for the disdain is because PFF is purely a fantasy site and when it comes to real football they truly suck.

The 6 man DL rotation of Siliga, Brown, Easley at DT and Jones, Ninkovich, Sheard at DE looks awesome. Six starting caliber players. Branch, Flowers, and Chris Jones look like solid depth players too.

pdangle said:

Agreed, they should probably throw a little regression to the mean in there.

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That and get a little more like MLB with it's stats. WAR, etc,

DarrylS said:

IMO, PFF is not well liked because they try to quantify very subjective team info into what they call "meaningful statistics"... for many of us it just does not translate all that well.

Prefer my own personal, "eyeball" method..

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There is nothing wrong with that. In football, if you know the game and know what "good" looks like, you can quickly discern if a player is doing well. However, when it comes down to quantifying how good a player (say CB) is playing, things like TD's allowed per target, receptions per target, passes defensed, INTs are valuable to know. With that said, because football is such a team game, you need stats that show something like WAR, QBR or other stats that show the overall value that player-when part of the mix provides the defense.

Ivan said:

They named Kareem Mackenzie the best player in football one year and claimed Brady wasn't elite last season. The reason for the disdain is because PFF is purely a fantasy site and when it comes to real football they truly suck.

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Yep-they paint and incomplete picture.

lurker1965 said:

If your metric determines Tom Brady is the 18th best QB in the league then your metric is wrong. I can see not #1. I can see, but not agree with, Luck, Rodgers, Manning etc., but when I see Colin Kaepernick* and Dalton...
(*It was over a season ago.)

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...then logic would say for PFF to find the formula that says TB12 is a Top 5 QB

robertweathers said:

Yep-they tell and incomplete picture.

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The problem I have with it is that they conflate fantasy football with the real thing, and their adherents tend to run with that.

PFF is actually a football site first, and fantasy second.

But their gradings are fair game

Interesting thing is that it would appear teams agree with their analytics, I remember reading somewhere that nearly half the league has a contract with them for their analysis.

strngplyr said:

Interesting thing is that it would appear teams agree with their analytics, I remember reading somewhere that nearly half the league has a contract with them for their analysis.

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I wouldn't have any idea if teams actually pay for their grades, or if they just use them for the hard data.
pff watches every play and tallies up just about everything

like this for example
https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2015/06/20/route-breakdown-go-routes/

DarrylS said:

IMO, PFF is not well liked because they try to quantify very subjective team info into what they call "meaningful statistics"... for many of us it just does not translate all that well.

Prefer my own personal, "eyeball" method..

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PFF is not liked because PFF's analysis sucks. There's really nothing more to it than that. I was an early champion of PFF, back before it turned to ****.

eom said:

I wouldn't have any idea if teams actually pay for their grades, or if they just use them for the hard data.
pff watches every play and tallies up just about everything

like this for example
https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2015/06/20/route-breakdown-go-routes/

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Yeah, I don't know if its true or not, but whether you agree with their conclusions they do a hell of a lot of film study.

And I like said, I only read it. On the internet. So you can take that however you want.

strngplyr said:

Yeah, I don't know if its true or not, but whether you agree with their conclusions they do a hell of a lot of film study.

And I like said, I only read it. On the internet. So you can take that however you want.

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The data is fine. It's the analysis that blows.


BTW, you may be referring to the MMQB article, though I don't see any number of actual teams claimed. Wiki claims it was 5 teams back in 2011. Here's the MMQB link, to see if that's the one you mean:

http://mmqb.si.com/2015/01/25/pro-football-focus-nfl-neil-hornsby-cris-collinsworth-analytics/

Deus Irae said:

The data is fine. It's the analysis that blows.


BTW, you may be referring to the MMQB article, though I don't see any number of actual teams claimed. Wiki claims it was 5 teams back in 2011. Here's the MMQB link, to see if that's the one you mean:

http://mmqb.si.com/2015/01/25/pro-football-focus-nfl-neil-hornsby-cris-collinsworth-analytics/

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Yeah, that's the one, from the article:

Neil Hornsby isn’t doing this solely as a labor of love, though that’s precisely how his business, Pro Football Focus, began nine years ago in Luton, England, some 30 miles north of London. Living stateside since October, he now counts 13 NFL teams—40% of the league—as clients, including seven teams from this season’s playoff field. He also oversees a staff of roughly 80 full- and part-time employees who watch countless hours of game footage from their home offices in California, Northern Ireland and seemingly everywhere in between.

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robertweathers said:

There is nothing wrong with that. In football, if you know the game and know what "good" looks like, you can quickly discern if a player is doing well. However, when it comes down to quantifying how good a player (say CB) is playing, things like TD's allowed per target, receptions per target, passes defensed, INTs are valuable to know. With that said, because football is such a team game, you need stats that show something like WAR, QBR or other stats that show the overall value that player-when part of the mix provides the defense.

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I agree performance can be quantified to a degree, however how many times have fans lamented a performance on the field as a player has not shown up in "Gamebook" w/o any stats only to receive high praise the next day from BB for doing his job???

PFF started the whole DVOA thing which I never understood all that well either.. imo you can quantify the performance of a QB, CB, WR, TE and a RB... but how do you quantify the performance of a OL, DL, LB or even a long snapper??

Sometimes there is a tendency to overthink this football thing.. for me am satisfied with less sophisticated rating systems..

DarrylS said:

I agree performance can be quantified to a degree, however how many times have fans lamented a performance on the field as a player has not shown up in "Gamebook" w/o any stats only to receive high praise the next day from BB for doing his job???

PFF started the whole DVOA thing which I never understood all that well either.. imo you can quantify the performance of a QB, CB, WR, TE and a RB... but how do you quantify the performance of a OL, DL, LB or even a long snapper??

Sometimes there is a tendency to overthink this football thing.. for me am satisfied with less sophisticated rating systems..

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Yep. I'm sure that there are a bunch of sabremetrics that teams use to justify salary and compensation. I mean, the team KNEW that Wilfork deserved the big money deal in 2009. How did they justify that quantitatively? They must have some kind of a WAR or PAAR (points allowed above replacement) or YAAR (yards allowed above replacement). I'm just making that up but because football is such a team game, there has to be some kind of math that tells a FO that, even though a player doesn't put up big numbers, he is valuable to the team.

PFF is pure garbage. You don't need them to see that Siliga is our best DT.

Zach Moore is also reportedly around 290 pounds now and has been playing quite a bit inside during OTAs. His length and athleticism inside could be crazy!

DarrylS said:

I agree performance can be quantified to a degree, however how many times have fans lamented a performance on the field as a player has not shown up in "Gamebook" w/o any stats only to receive high praise the next day from BB for doing his job???

PFF started the whole DVOA thing which I never understood all that well either.. imo you can quantify the performance of a QB, CB, WR, TE and a RB... but how do you quantify the performance of a OL, DL, LB or even a long snapper??

Sometimes there is a tendency to overthink this football thing.. for me am satisfied with less sophisticated rating systems..

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isn't dvoa a football outsiders thing?

I think you're conflating raw stats with grades, which are 2 separate and distinct services performed by pff.

edit: to answer the specific question, you can quantify pretty much any position's performance.
specific OL might have pressures allowed as a % of snaps played, while the run game performance might have to be actually graded by someone.
I think football outsiders uses dvoa to measure the work of the line, as a whole.
DL really depends on the position you're talking about, but it'd be some combo similar to the OL
LB has coverage stats, pressure stats, tackles and missed tackles, along with yardage allowed on tackles.
long snapper would be simply % of successful snaps along with accuracy of snaps --- pff grades snaps as on or off target even if it's a successful snap.