Pro Football Focus exists within an interesting space in the National Football League. It is acknowledged at every level. They are noted in graphics during the game. The broadcasters may note a time or two a player’s grade or other rating. Sam Monson from the site holds a vote for the Hall of Fame and the post-season awards.
Yet there’s a major love-and-hate dynamic, both with players and with fans, and pretty much everybody else. Sometimes the same person will hold those contrary feelings. I suppose I’m one of them; some things they do I find quite valuable, potentially. Others I find absurd.
One of their most outspoken critics lately, however, is future Hall of Famer J.J. Watt. The three-time Defensive Player of the Year is regarded both in reality and in PFF land as one of the greatest defenders in the history of the game. And he’s not interested in some outsider telling him about what he already knows.
“I’ve literally sat in a meeting room with coaches and put the grades side-by-side, from a coach’s grade and from the PFF grade”, he said on the Pat McAfee Show earlier this week. “I’ve done it, and it’s not even remotely close”.
“Don’t sit here and tell me, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, you don’t know how all this works’”, he added, referring to social media exchanges he had with Monson, who tried to explain something he believes Watt misunderstands about the website. “Yeah, I do. I’ve literally done it. I’ve sat in that room and done it with coaches in the National Football League. So take your shit and shovel it somewhere else because I’m not dealing with it”.
It is a great quote, to be sure, and one that will curry a lot of favor. Not entirely wrongly. In Monson’s defense, though, there are things about PFF that Watt doesn’t seem to understand. He mocked the Turnover-Worthy Play, for example, but he’s dead wrong there.
If it wasn’t intercepted, how worthy was it, he chided. But it’s not hard to figure out. It makes a lot of sense to judge a quarterback based only on his pass and not on the result of his pass. If a wide receiver drops a touchdown, the quality of the throw should be acknowledged. If a defender drops what should be an interception, that should be acknowledged as well.
That, to my mind, has been PFF’s greatest virtue since arriving on the scene. On the whole, they have helped to shift focus away from just the stat sheet and, in a real sense, back onto where it belongs, the field itself. A 79-yard touchdown pass could be a rather pedestrian play by the quarterback if it’s his target making it all happen. Or he could have a receiver run backward and get tackled for less yardage than the quarterback’s pass traveled.
With that being said, there is a certain “air” around PFF, and I do think that Watt nailed that. It is necessary for their business model to project not only authority but also novelty. If they just echoed what everybody else already thinks, their value would diminish.
“They literally have to be different than other people for people to be like, ‘Oh yeah, they do know something that we don’t know. It’s bullshit, man”, he said, and he did have a good reason. “It truly is leaking into affecting players’ contracts, affecting players’ Pro Bowls, All-Pros, things like that. It is actually real in what it’s doing, and it is extremely unfortunate”.
But Pro Football Focus is likely here to stay. They have their place, and they contribute some value to the discussion. But just like anything else, what they say should not be taken as gospel. Sometimes things that they say that are taken as controversial actually make sense. Other times, they’re just unprovable, ephemeral nonsense.
