Happy days are here again, as Rivals has teamed with Pro Football Focus to provide more statistical analysis to our lives, stuff that'll help corroborate observations and other things that should make us look more carefully. Either way, it'll make us look smarter.
With that, we expect to incorporate more PFF stats into our weekly content, starting with PFF grades for the top 20 offensive and defensive players from Cal's game against UNC.
For those that don't know, here's how the PFF grading system works:
On every play, a PFF analyst will grade each player on a scale of -2 to +2 according to what he did on the play.
At one end of the scale you have a catastrophic game-ending interception or pick-six from a quarterback, and at the other a perfect deep bomb into a tight window in a critical game situation, with the middle of that scale being 0-graded, or ‘expected’ plays that are neither positive nor negative.
Each game is also graded by a second PFF analyst independent of the first, and those grades are compared by a third, Senior Analyst, who rules on any differences between the two. These grades are verified by the Pro Coach Network, a group of former and current NFL coaches with over 700 combined years of NFL coaching experience, to get them as accurate as they can be.
From there, the grades are normalized to better account for game situation; this ranges from where a player lined up to the dropback depth of the quarterback or the length of time he had the ball in his hand and everything in between. They are finally converted to a 0-100 scale and appear in our Player Grades Tool.
Season-level grades aren’t simply an average of every game-grade a player compiles over a season, but rather factor in the duration at which a player performed at that level. Achieving a grade of 90.0 in a game once is impressive, doing it (12) times in a row is more impressive.
It is entirely possible that a player will have a season grade higher than any individual single-game grade he achieved, because playing well for an extended period of time is harder to do than for a short period, Similarly, playing badly for a long time is a greater problem than playing badly once, so the grade can also be compounded negatively.
Each week, grades are subject to change while we run through our extensive review process including All-22 tape runs and coaching audit, so you may notice discrepancies among grades published in earlier articles compared with those in the Player Grades tool until grade lock each week.
Takeaways: McMorris made the All-Pac-12 team of the week for the Bears, and his run blocking has been what the Bears have hung their hat on in the last few years of having him at the fullback spot. He took 20 snaps on run plays for the Bears, 80% of his use against UNC
Jake Curhan was the highest graded starter for the Bears, while Addison Ooms was the lowest graded. Lots of people in between, as the Bears' struggles on offense were well documented over the weekend. To a certain extent, Ooms and Bennett got dropped a bit for their penalties, with Bennett picking up a couple false starts and Ooms getting a snap infraction. Chase Garbers might have been the highest rated QB if he hadn't had a delay of game penalty. As you can see, the QBs were all in the same group, though Garbers was the highest graded runner for the Bears on the day.
Takeaways: Cameron Goode showed that he was the best of the Bears on Saturday, with him pick six driving him toward the top. Before he went out with an injury, Goode was productive in his 49 snaps.
Behind him is Evan Weaver, who was the top run defender for the Bears on the weekend, as his 13 tackles (11 solo) had him running back and forth making plays, and with 7 run stops (keeping the offense from making at least an expected play), Weaver led the defense.
Bynum's numbers weren't as good at the end of the day due to the late pass interference call and TD by Anthony Ratliff-Williams on a fade.
Ogunbanjo's graded higher than the initial watching of the game showed, even with all of seventeen reps. He had the highest pass rush grade among the group, with 10 pass reps, and looks to have an expanded role next week with Goode likely out.
Overall
The Cal offense finished the game with a cumulative rating of 58.3, which ranked 112th out of the 127 FBS teams that have played so far.
Pass Blocking - 73.3
Passing - 51.7
Running - 56.7
Receiving - 57.5
Run Blocking- 64.4
Any way you slice it, the Bears had continual trouble getting yards on the offensive side of things. PFF was relatively friendly to the Bears for their pass blocking despite the four sacks allowed. Everything else leaves plenty of room for improvement.
The defense was almost the polar opposite, as the Bears ranked 13th out of 127 teams with a rating of 85.2.
Run Defense - 79.6
Tackling - 74.9
Coverage - 90.1
Pressure - 61.2
The Bears didn't record any sacks, which was the main issue of the defense, but the coverage rating more than made up for that. The Bears ranked third in the country in that area due to their four interceptions. The other areas, run defense and tackling, would probably look better without the fourth quarter that saw the Bears back off the gas.