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This means very little. Take it with a grain of salt . . .
A big story the last couple of days was that Pro Football Focus ranked the Jets’ WR core 31st out of 32 teams.
A lot of stories written about this ranking the last couple of days.
Many writers worship PFF and view their data as the gospel.
I’m not one of them.
They do analytic studies on all the players in the league, often without knowing team playbooks or player assignments.
How can you rate people when you don’t know exactly what they are being asked to do on a given play?
Bill Belichick isn’t a fan.
“I know from our team, there are times when we don’t know exactly what went wrong until we sort out the play,” Belichick said on WEEI. “So it’s impossible someone else could have known. Sometimes what it looks like is not what it is.”
And this applies to watching the film of opponents.
“We get it wrong, too,” Belichick said. “We’re watching another team on film, and we’ve seen all their plays and we’re still not even sure who was supposed to do what.”
Now granted, obviously, there are things that can be analyzed when watching receivers with knowing the system, like drops. But even with that, did the quarterback throw the ball to the right spot? Sometimes a receiver will be accused of dropping a pass, but it was a timing route, and the QB didn’t throw the pass to the right landmark.
So many NFL players have issues with PFF because media and fans will talk about that player’s PFF ranking, and the player will say, “They don’t even know what I’m being asked to do.”
A perfect example are blown coverages. People are quick to blame a defender who’s in the area of a catch, but they might have been covering for somebody else who blew an assignment.
“You see a play on film and a receiver goes uncovered down the field. So you know it’s probably one of two guys’ mistakes, so you don’t know which guy it is,” Belichick said on WEEI. “A lot of times the announcer will say, ‘[This guy] should’ve taken him,’ or, ‘[That guy] should have taken him.’ And I’m looking at the play saying, it could have been either guy, depending on what the call was.”
Exactly.
And the confusion can happen with blocking assignments on the offensive line. It might look like one lineman was beat for a sack, pressure or run stop, but it’s possible that there was a switch-off block supposed to happen, and one lineman didn’t do it, so the guy who looks like the culprit is left holding the bag.
A lot of writers use PFF ratings for offensive line analysis with blind faith.
Look, there are times where, let’s say, a left or right tackle is soundly beat by an edge-rusher. You don’t need to be Mike Munchak to see that the tackle clearly got beat. But there are a lot of twists and stunts by defensive linemen, so often guys get blamed, especially on the interior, for things, that weren’t their fault.
I respect the people at PFF for how hard they work, but I don’t use their ratings, since they don’t have access to playbooks.
Time will tell how good the Jets’ receiving corps will be.
But it’s not just on them – it’s on the QB to read defenses well, go through his progressive scans effectively, manipulate the safety with his eyes, throw accurately, and so forth.
As a long-time NFL personnel guys once said: “Quarterbacks make receivers, receivers don’t make quarterbacks.”
July 15, 2020
Premium will return by 9:30 pm on Thursday and I will do a deep dive into this receiving corps.
