Its hard to find a lot of good individual performances in the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-21 loss Thursday night to the Philadelphia Eagles, but Pro Football Focus thinks that they have identified a few.
According to their first glance at the tape, quarterback Bruce Gradkowski (2.4), wide receiver Antonio Brown (2.4) and center Maurkice Pouncey (2.2) received the highest ratings of all Steelers players on offense. Gradkowski was 8-of-11 passing for 105 yards and two touchdowns in his 19 snaps played while Brown caught three passes for 59 yards in his extended work.
Bringing up the rear in PFF’s offensive grades this week are running back Le’Veon Bell (-2.1) and wide receiver Justin Brown (-2.3). Brown did not register a catch in the game while Bell rushed for 23 yards on nine carries.
On the defensive side of the football, PFF has cornerback Antwon Blake (1.3) and safety Troy Polamalu (1.3) as their two highest graded players. Blake, however, did allow both passes thrown his way to be completed for 20 yards. Polamalu had one of the few defensive highlights during the game thanks to his interception of an ill-advised pass by Eagles quarterback Nick Foles.
As far as Steelers defensive players in the red go, PFF has a ton of them with cornerback Cortez Allen (-4.2), defensive end Cameron Heyward (-4.1) and linebacker Jarvis Jones (-3.0) all grading out as the three worst.
PFF usually updates their grades later in the week, so several players are likely to have their ratings changed. As usual, we will have several individual player break downs for you over the course of the next week to analyze.
Here is a link to PFF’s refocused article following the game.
