Training Camp: News, Notes & Updates

[Whatever]

(08-21-2019, 10:44 PM)THE PISTONS Wrote: Low 60 PFF rankings aren't great by any means...so that shows Hopkins struggled.

I think what PFF does is balance good plays with bad. Like if a player had 4 good blocks and 2 bad ones, they might grade out decent...where fans might tend to remember the 2 bad plays.

In general, the board seems to want Price to succeed so there will be atleast some bias towards his good plays.

I'm with you though...I'm starting Price over Hopkins.

When it comes to OL grades, most plays get graded as a 0.  That means basically that you did your job in a capable manner.  If you screw up, you get a negative grade.  They've said it's very hard to get a positive grade for a play, and you have to do something exceptional, like pancake a guy in the run game, hold up for 5+ seconds in pass protection, make a particularly tough reach block, etc.

Their system makes it easier for them to grade quickly, because they basically just have to watch for really good and really bad snaps and just chalk up everything else as 0's.  It's a flawed system in that a guy can do his job unexceptionally for 48 plays, but get graded negatively because of two bad plays.

As fans, it's easy to zone in on a couple of bad snaps by a guy in your doghouse and assume he's trash, especially if he didn't have any dominant snaps.  It's also easy to overreact to routine plays made by a guy you're pulling for and make them out to be positive plays when they're actually 0 sum snaps.

Neither guy played great, but both were at least serviceable.  Price obviously went against backups, so you have to take that into account.  Unfortunately, Price finally seeing snaps at G in practice may mean there's a real chance Hopkins is going to beat him out and they need him to be able to back up at more than 1 spot.