Pro Football Focus is a great service that provides an in-depth look at how individual players perform for each play on different levels of football, but it continues to put out misleading information via social media.
The website, which provides premium data and analytics, keeps posting about the highest-graded returning position players from a national perspective or conference perspective on the PFF College account on Twitter. These lists have misled fans to believing some players are being rated as the top players at their position entering the 2023 season, which is just not true.
First, you need to understand what these grades mean. According to the PFF website, players receive grades of -2 to +2 in 0.5 increments on a given play with 0 generally being the average or “expected” grade. The scale goes from zero to 100.
"There are a few exceptions as each position group has different rules, but those are the basics," PFF states. "The zero grade is important as most plays feature many players doing their job at a reasonable, or expected, level, so not every player on every play needs to earn a positive or a negative."
The overall grade for each player — which is what is being used in these posts — comprises different categories each game. All of those game grades then turn into a full season grade, which is what PFF is referring to in these posts, the most recent of which was regarding returning safeties in the SEC.
Offensive players can earn grades in four different categories — passing game, pass block, running game, run block. Not every player will receive a grade in each category, as offensive lineman are only graded for pass block and run block.
On the defensive side of the ball, players are also graded in four categories — run defense, tackling, pass rush and coverage. Not all grades are created equal, as guys play different numbers of snaps for each category. For example, cornerback Dwight McGlothern played 48 snaps in coverage and just one snap as a pass rusher during the Week 1 win over Cincinnati last year.
Let's just look at the most recent post about the top returning safeties in the SEC. Two of those players are Razorbacks — Hudson Clark and Alfahiym Walcott.
The first issue — Walcott played for Baylor, so his grade should automatically not be included as he didn't play for an SEC team in 2022. While his 75.4 defense grade from the 2022 season is very impressive, it came with the Bears in a Big 12 schedule.
Notably, PFF doesn't take into account competition when grading, so Raheim Sanders will be graded the same way for a game against Western Carolina as he is for a game at LSU.
Now let's look at Clark's grade, which was 77.0. First of all, PFF lists his position as cornerback for all 13 of the Hogs' games in 2023. Clark moved to safety around the midway point of the season and he played the position for the rest of the year.
Based on PFF's own explanation, Clark's grade likely would've been different if it recognized his move to safety.
"While we believe the grade is an excellent baseline for how well a player performed his given role, we also believe the using the entire context is crucial when evaluating players," PFF states. "Perhaps a slot receiver had to play more than expected on the outside or a nose tackle was forced to play more three-technique than his coaching staff initially desired. Both players are being evaluated based on what they did, and that context is important when using the grades."
So it would've been important to focus on the context of Clark's position change. His grade probably isn't the same if that happened.
I'm by no means saying Clark isn't worthy or deserving of his grade, and I actually think he did much better following the move to safety. But there are still some problems with his grade.
PFF gave Clark a 99.9 pass rush grade for the Alabama game in Week 5. According to the site, Clark played one down as a pass rusher and he recorded a sack. If you go back and watch the play (5:00 mark in fourth quarter), Clark made a tackle for loss and forced a fumble on a designed run play by Crimson Tide quarterback Jalen Milroe.
That grade for one play, which wasn't even a sack, inflated his pass rush grade to 95.3 on the season, which had to have impacted his overall grade as he also recorded a 58.2 in run defense, 38.6 in tackling and 77.0 in coverage.
Again, Clark had a great redshirt junior season in 2022, but the numbers from PFF are misleading and they are being presented without context too often because of these graphics being posted.
Another example of PFF doing this is when it puts out the highest graded returning wide receivers in the SEC on May 29. That list included Arkansas wide receiver Andrew Armstrong, who earned an 82.9 grade as a receiver for Texas A&M-Commerce last season. Again, competition isn't taken into account — Armstrong likely wouldn't have had an 82.9 if he played an SEC schedule.
No disrespect to what Armstrong achieved in 2022, but that grade was earned on the FCS level. To say that he is the second-highest graded returning wide receiver is just not fair to the other returning SEC wideouts.
It's not super hard to recognize the flaws in these lists being posted if you just look at the fact that it says returning SEC players and there are names being listed such as Walcott and Armstrong — two players who have never played in the SEC.
While the grades are earned no matter the level, they need more context. These aren't preseason rankings, they aren't power rankings or anything of that nature. They are simply lists of what grade these players had during the 2022 season.
"We are not necessarily telling you who the best players are," PFF states. "Our rankings are more of a performance evaluation and a reflection of how efficiently a player made plays in the time he was on the field."
PFF is a great tool to use, and HawgBeat utilizes it each week during to see how Arkansas football players graded out, but it is also much different from a simple rankings system.
