Patriots 2021 season thread

In essence, PFF is an opinion. They use stats but it’s not stat driven. Football plays are too nuanced to be graded as stat driven. We see it all the time on a pass rush. One guy chases the QB off his spot right into someone else and the other dude gets the sack. But it’s still an opinion. However, it’s an educated opinion by someone who analyzes football all the time. It’s worth paying attention to. If it tells you something you didn’t believe, it’s probably worth asking why and not dismissing.

For example. Jaylen Smith has had a good coverage grade recently. Why? That goes against what we think of him. Maybe he’s improved some here as he’s become a veteran and adapted to the Cowboy system. Maybe the Cowboys have just gotten way better at using him and are only putting him in a spot to succeed here. This doesn’t mean he’s a great coverage LB, it simply means, whatever coverage he’s been asked to do, he’s done well.

Capitalizing this for emphasis:

THESE GRADES ARE BASED OFF OF A PLAYERS PLAY AND EXECUTION OF WHAT THEY ARE ASKED TO DO. THEY ARE NOT A RANKING OF A PLAYERS OVERALL SKILLS.

Good examples. Patrick Chung was much better here the second time around. Because Bill figured out how to use him. Collins, seems to play better here because he’s used differently. In football, it’s about putting guys in position to succeed as much as it is just putting the most talented players on the field.

That's the problem it's opinion based, with over 600 different people grading the plays. Just look at this board, most are crazy intelligent sport junkies. We don't agree on players performance over short stints all the time. This isn’t like Baseball Refrence bwar, it's like DRS. Where how different people grade plays can make a huge difference on your DRS total. It's why they say the more data the better and that's with 162 games a year. Football had 16 and now 17. It's highly subjective and the more I study PFF grades the more crazy shit you see in small sample sizes. Now I will say when looking at a full season worth of data it gets much better.

Still things like 2.1 pressures equaling a sack is wrong in my book. I get it, you need to come up with a number, yet that ratio seems way off. A sack ends a play, takes away a down and results in negative yardage. A hurry certainly has value, yet a DE can get a hurry and the QB still makes a big play. Just look at Mac Jones, the sacks are a much bigger issues than hurries. Heck QB hits are also more important than hurries.

Take Jaylon Smith, given his playing time only 56% of the defensive snaps. To be targeted 10 times in four games is a lot. That's not a small sample size for a LB. The stats are just horrible 90% of the targets are being completed. You can certainly get some stats that can be misleading in small sample sizes. Yet an 80 plus coverage grade is crazy high. The guy is so good at coverage yet he's being attacked. I don't buy it for a second. It's just someone's crazy opinion, like Wise is our best defensive player. That's an opinion, I certainly don't agree and I'm a big Wise fan. Right up there with Herron having a lower pass blocking grade with no sacks allowed than Durant who gave up three quick sacks in a half. Right up with Jonathan Jones being the top ranked corner for weeks. You will find tons of examples of crazy weekly grades using PFF.

What PFF needs is a competitor to push them, like Baseball Refrence versus Fangraphs. Most times they are rather close, yet for certain players in certain years there's a massive difference. You get massive difference in how they rate defense. When they agree it's easy, when they don't you need to see why and pick which one got it more right. I'd also like to see an approach using PFF and combining advanced stats of Football Refrence. Football is just way behind most other sports when it comes to advanced stats.

That might be the case, it still doesn't change the fact that those PFF grades are only as good as the person grading it and that changes all the time. You have zero clue who is grading it and if they are any good. They could have multiple people grade the players and use averages, that would be a good way to weed out the bad graders.

Just look at the NBA and NFL draft, the experts who we know and can look at their track records. They don't come close to agreeing after watching the same tape. Combine a bunch of them and you start to get better information.

Heck look at Matthew Hurt, your Duke boy. You thought he was going to rise. I saw a guy who’s body was so bad he was a long-term project that couldn't even play in the NBA till he fixed that. He went undrafted. Were both sport junkies that are very knowledgeable and have watched decades of games. 

Sure targets in a vacuum could be misleading. Look at Jackson last game, he moved around and was always on Evans. Without Gronk they clearly wanted to focus on Evans. I thought Jackson had a good game, yet a big part of that is he was able to stop a lot of targets from being catches. 58% completion percentage is below Evans average with Brady at QB, 64% last year and 62% this year. With Smith I'm not just using targets, I'm using targets, completion percentage and QBR. I'm also looking at four years of data. I certainly won't call out Gilmore for 2019 having the most targets in three years when he had a career low QBR. It's the combination of the three. For four straight years, Smith is bad in all three stats. Which is why I assumed he must be really good at stopping the run, like why else did he get a monster contract? 

So Mason and Brown are out. Wynn and Onwenu still on Covid list. Now Mills downgraded to put. Cool cool.

I’ll leave this here. It’s going to be so much worse today too. Hopefully, Mac makes it out alive.

Bedard, breaks down his own offensive line numbers so these may differ than others you see.







www.bostonsportsjournal.com/2021/10/05/Patriots-mac-jones-brady-bucs-issue-progress

However this review turns out, the continued ball security issues of the running backs is extremely disappointing.

Damien Harris sucks - keep carrying that football around the facility.

Giving up 250+ first half yards to this Texans offense is inexcusable. Bad tackling, bad coverage, terrible safety play.

People are stupid.

That running back room is awful. I’m pretty sure Davis Mills is trash.

This Patriot’s team keeps playing squads off their worst performance of the season (Saints, Bucs, and Texans).

This is a must win and the secondary came out flat and Stephon Gilmore isn’t walking through that door.

Well, time to get into draft watching. Kyle Hamilton, anyone??

QB class was better last year, so feeling pretty decent about picking Mac this year (and NOT sacrificing a 1st to move up!) even if we do end up at the top of 2022 draft. Matt Corral and Kenny Pickett are looking better than the pre-season top set of Rattler and Howell, and I think Mac compares well to both. Malik Willis is a little too improvisational for Bill. So, Mac Attack it is. There might be a decent WR available at the top of the 2nd round too if/when we go defense first.

Bill looks smart: Mac Jones, Matt Judon. (ADD: BAREMORE)
Bill looks dumb: everything else?