PFF called out by Vikings Coach (same group that called Brady "not elite")

[BSR]

If you remember a few months back there was a big made up controversy on how Brady was no longer elite. This was based largely on the work done by Pro Football Focus, who;s work has shockingly begun to take on more and more traction among media members. Yesterday they also made a big announcement on how Chris Collinsworth even became an investor.

Many here, including myself, have long questioned their ability to accurately review film and grade players without having at least some inside knowledge of the play calls. At least one NFL Coach seems to agree:

"The last thing that I want to talk about before I let you guys go is this Pro Football Focus thing," Zimmer said. "I know everybody wants to get the scoop on this, but quite honestly there’s not really anybody... I look at the grades and I can’t tell you what a 0.7 is or anything like that, but I know that the people that are grading our games and our defenses and our offenses, they don’t know if the tackle gets beat inside, if we weren’t sliding out to the nickel or who our guys are supposed to cover. I guarantee they don’t know who is in our blitz package and what they are supposed to do. I would just ask everybody to take that with a grain of salt, including our fans. We as coaches get paid a whole bunch of money to do the jobs that we do, evaluate the players that we evaluate and grade them how we grade them and not based on someone else.
Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer skeptical of Pro Football Focus grades - SI.com
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I thought it was odd that an NFL coach would go out of his way to shoot down some statistical site. Obviously something struck a nerve.

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[Rob0729]

All you have to is look at the year that Brady unanimously won the league MVP and PFF ranked him something like the 19th best player in the NFL to show how much of a joke they are. They have always written off Brady as a system QB. How good of a system do they have if the write off one of the greatest QBs of all time as a system QB.

 

[Big-T]

Why does garbage like PFF get traction over say Football Outsiders which is actually good?

 

[BritPat]

If you read PFF, we don't seem to have any good players. How we win so many games simply must be because the other teams suck, yet everyone else seems to have elite players, according to their ratings anyway.

As Zimmer says, they have absolutely no idea what the playcalls or blocking schemes are, to start with. It's crazy that so much respect is given to it.

 

[BSR]

Why does garbage like PFF get traction over say Football Outsiders which is actually good?

I view the two very differently. Football Outsiders tried to bring something new to football by doing statistical analysis of play results. Its also far from perfect but gives a data point and comparative that you might not otherwise see. PFF on the other hand tries to replicate what scouts and coaches do but based on some of their conclusions/grades they are obviously missing something in their system. There seems to be a serious flaw there.

 

[Spiral]

I get what Zimmer says to a certain extent, but the Vikings (and every other team) watch film and grade opposing NFL players and college prospects, mostly without this knowledge.

 

[Sciz]

I get what Zimmer says to a certain extent, but the Vikings (and every other team) watch film and grade opposing NFL players and college prospects, mostly without this knowledge.

Except that it's done by people with actual football knowledge.

 

[Zeus]

Good for Mike Zimmer. He's right.

If you don't have specific knowledge of the scheme and the player's responsibility, it's tough to evaluate performance. BB has alluded to this, saying that even coaches can't always make definitive judgments of other teams on film because they don't know exactly what the players were supposed to do.

 

[BSR]

I get what Zimmer says to a certain extent, but the Vikings (and every other team) watch film and grade opposing NFL players and college prospects, mostly without this knowledge.

Which is what makes it so difficult to do. At least Zimmer knows what his own players were supposed to be doing on any given play.

 

[BritPat]

I get what Zimmer says to a certain extent, but the Vikings (and every other team) watch film and grade opposing NFL players and college prospects, mostly without this knowledge.

I can't really agree with that. When a scout or a coach looks at a College player, they're making a projection about how their attributes would help them succeed in the NFL. The defensive scheme (if it's a defensive player for example) really doesn't mean much because they won't really be playing in anything similar at the Pro level. Look at Ty Warren for example, he mostly played as 4-3 DE at TAMU, yet the Patriots drafted him to play as a 3-4 DE. There are many examples of this.

As for grading opposing NFL players, most teams know what the others are running and know how most plays should evolve and what the responsibilities are. There is some guesswork in there, granted, but what they do and what PFF tries to do, are worlds apart.

 

[BritPat]

Which is what makes it so difficult to do. At least Zimmer knows what his own players were supposed to be doing on any given play.

Exactly that.

Amateur armchair analyst sees a Tight End take in a 20 yard pass down the right hash beating a Safety to the ball - grades Safety negatively. But what if the Safety was playing the left side of the field and reacted because someone missed their assignment and ends up saving a Touchdown? Still negative? Or positive?

Without knowing what each player's responsibility is for each play, you simply cannot give an accurate grade.

 

[manxman2601]

I have no idea why people make such a big deal about PFF. It's just one data point useful for things like snap counts, of some use for information like how many hurries a defensive player has (for example, it's just told me that one of my pre-draft banks Caraun Reid has the most QB hurries of any DT during this pre-season, something of interest to me) and less useful for it's grading. It certainly doesn't deserve the weird bigotry so many on Patsfans have against it. It is neither The Gospel, nor is it a complete waste of time.

 

[Sicilian]

I get what Zimmer says to a certain extent, but the Vikings (and every other team) watch film and grade opposing NFL players and college prospects, mostly without this knowledge.

Which is exactly why teams have such a sporadic record when it comes to bringing in rookies and free agents. If it were easy to tell how good a player was just by watching tape with no inside knowledge on scheme and assignment, a free agent would almost never fail without a surprise injury.

 

[BritPat]

I have no idea why people make such a big deal about PFF. It's just one data point useful for things like snap counts, of some use for information like how many hurries a defensive player has (for example, it's just told me that one of my pre-draft banks Caraun Reid has the most QB hurries of any DT during this pre-season, something of interest to me) and less useful for it's grading. It certainly doesn't deserve the weird bigotry so many on Patsfans have against it. It is neither The Gospel, nor is it a complete waste of time.

Even something like a QB hurry can be subjective. What is the play supposed to be? Is it designed to draw the DT's up the field, block the MLB and then throw a quick dump off to the RB or FB?

By the way, if you read their 'opinion' articles, they rate themselves VERY highly. They'd like you to believe it's Gospel.

 

[dales804]

Am I the only one who's never visited their website? I've seen them mentioned plenty and know what they do but I've never looked at the site.

Is this the same site that last year for ESPN The Magazine said the Pats would win 1 game on the road (week 1 @ BUF) and lose the AFCE to MIA? And they somehow gave probability of all this happening.

 

[manxman2601]

Even something like a QB hurry can be subjective. What is the play supposed to be? Is it designed to draw the DT's up the field, block the MLB and then throw a quick dump off to the RB or FB?

By the way, if you read their 'opinion' articles, they rate themselves VERY highly. They'd like you to believe it's Gospel.

Which company doesn't? That's called marketing.

A QB hurry might be subjective but before my last post, could you have told me how Caraun Reid had performed in pre-season? Unless you'd watched every Lions game, probably not, but now we have a data point that we can check further if we feel it's important to do so.

Unless someone watches every single NFL game, there's no way they can have any idea as to how players around the league are performing in any consistent way. At least PFF have attempted to provide that service and I find them a much more reliable source than "player A sucks" which is the quality of player breakdown generally available on fan forums (present company mostly excepted) and comment sections.

 

[Kontradiction]

Why does garbage like PFF get traction over say Football Outsiders which is actually good?

People on the internet need to win arguments so their search results are naturally skewed toward the outcome they are looking for. More often than not, the outcome will come from PFF.

 

[Rob0729]

I want to know what are the 13 teams that get information from PFF. I just want to compile a list of General Managers and head coaches that need to be fired.

 

[RayClay]

PFF on the other hand tries to replicate what scouts and coaches do but based on some of their conclusions/grades they are obviously missing something in their system. There seems to be a serious flaw there.

They're over in england sipping tea with crumpets and they don't know a damn thing about football?

Seriously, they could be compiling data that's useful to NFL teams, while having no useful analysis because of what Zimmer said.

 

[BSR]

I have no idea why people make such a big deal about PFF. It's just one data point useful for things like snap counts, of some use for information like how many hurries a defensive player has (for example, it's just told me that one of my pre-draft banks Caraun Reid has the most QB hurries of any DT during this pre-season, something of interest to me) and less useful for it's grading. It certainly doesn't deserve the weird bigotry so many on Patsfans have against it. It is neither The Gospel, nor is it a complete waste of time.

I think there is some truth to what you say but that type of data is not what they typically promote. Instead we get the Tom Brady is no longer elite nonsense which they have been saying for years. The bigger problem is how some media take their grading as gospel.