02-24-2022, 05:56 PM
(02-24-2022, 05:05 PM)ochocincos Wrote: I think we all know that an analyst (PFF or otherwise) doesn't 100% know what a player is assigned to do, but they give their best guess.
I guess a fair question though is let's say a player does exactly what they were assigned to do, but it still results in a negative result.
Or on the flip side, they can't/don't do what they're assigned to do, but it results in a positive play.
How should that be assessed or who should be assessed?
Clearly people (teams and fans) put value into PFF if they're making money and growing the company, so they must be doing something well.
EDIT - You also talk about teams caring about their advanced stats, but that's locked behind their highest-tiered paywall. Since most fans don't want to pay for a stat service, they only get access to the cheaper/free tiers, which is primarily the player grades. And I think fans like the grades a lot because it gives them a comparable metric about whether a player is good/bad and also better/worse than someone else (accurate or not).
A player should always be graded on what they were supposed to do based on the play design, offensive alignment, and any checks made. The first one is easy and what PFF tries to grade on, the second is harder because each coordinator is different, the last one is basically impossible.
Negative results aren’t always anyones fault and I think that’s the hardest thing for people to understand. I like to come back to the double post TD from the first KC game. In that situation we were cover 3, the Chiefs were banking on that so when the first post crosses Baates face he takes him as he should. Apple is playing outside leverage because he has help to the inside he thinks, when the second post comes inside it’s wide open. Neither guy did anything wrong but fans don’t understand that the perfect offensive play call should be indefensible.
As to PFF, they have made fans feel smarter like they understand the game better which is why their popularity has increased. Most people don’t know that the NFL teams actually have access to a tier even higher than the general public with MUCH deeper stats. That subscript costs a lot, like new car a lot, and is only accessible to NFL teams/media members/ NFL partners. This is what the NFL teams are using when people reference PFF and this is the data that is really valuable, it’s super granular and gets into much more situational information.
