Despite being late due to my damaged laptop, I'm going to post these numbers tonight anyway. Hopefully we won't have much to talk about after tomorrow's SIU game.
I am NOT going to be doing this every week this season, primarily because I'm not paying the large upcharge for a premium subscription to weekly numbers, so I can only compare the new aggregate numbers with the week 0 grades and assume general grades. I may do a couple mid year updates on these. That means you'll need to average up a bit, ie, if a guy's grade increased from 60 to 70 after week 2, that means their week 2 was in the 80+ range, an elite performance.
I also had the opportunity to re-watch the Duke game today and have a lot of thoughts coming out of that as a result. As before, I'm not posting every single grade just the interesting ones.
As another reminder, these grades do not correlate to Madden grades or academic letter grades (ie, a grade in the high 60's is a respectable score and a grade of 80 is a phenomenal and elite score, not a D+, B-,) and these grades are also not adjusted by opponent. If you win your matchup and execute your assignment, you get a good score. If you don't, you get a bad score. It doesn't matter who you're lined up against. Also remember that penalties are scored against players overall scores, which has a noticeable impact on scores sometimes with big penalties. Last, the season long scores are just an average of all snaps or of game scores since the metric favors consistency, so a player who has one great game and one terrible game won't even out to average but will be graded a bit below that.
Offense overall:
Strengths and weaknesses abounded in this game on the offensive side. Generally, Hull and Gordon were totally unstoppable in the passing game and Jake did a great job constantly scheming them into positions where they had big matchup advantages over their defender. However, the run game was rough, especially to the right, and the receivers did little all day. It was still a good overall performance, (or rather, a GREAT performance by two skill guys while the line mostly gave enough to make things work) but much more a mixed bag than the defensive side (where it was just bad nearly everywhere).
QB:
Hilinski didn't get a very good score from PFF, but as I said in the week 1 write up, I honestly don't care about PFF QB ratings on Hilinski at all because we all watch him closely every play anyway. After my re watch, I do think some of the criticisms of him are very fair as he was late or behind receivers badly several times and couple of easily had several more INTs. But he also did some nice things in the game as well, especially recognizing his matchups, feeding Hull in stride, and moving the ball out quickly most of the time. I think the InsideNU writeup about the good and bad things he did was extremely fair and a good read. That article also had the premium fancy state PFF offers for a few hundred bucks.
RB:
Hull: 77.1 overall, even from 77.0. 67.8 running, down from 71.8. 92.1 pass catching, up from 86. Somewhat similar to his Nebraska performance, but slighly more extreme. PFF continues to think Hull is a decent but not remarkable runner of the football but a mega elite pass catcher out of the backfield. Can... anybody really disagree here?
Porter: 58.4 overall, down from 60.9 . 60.5 running, down from 62.2. 51.6 receiving, down from 53.7. Porter continues to look a little tentative out there and failed to move the pile given a couple chances vs Duke, which is a concern. My concerns about his injury recovery are definitely growing.
Clair: All of Clair's stats other than blocking were in the high 50's after both the Nebraska and Duke games, and it seems he's mostly being phased out.
WR: Help at receiver remains needed. Washington remains the guy who can flash some dynamic ability, but he still lacks size and wasn't open downfield, so when he doesn't do big things off of short passes, it's hard to be impressed. Navarro can at least catch and is tough, but he's also not often very open. Nobody else on the team has shown much at all this year, by my eyes.
Washington: 66.3 overall, down from 75.9. 66.4 receiving, down from 74.1. 69.9 run blocking, down from 72.8. Dropping a couple passes and generally not being open wasn't good for the score. These numbers dropping so much indicate he probably slipped under 60 for the week, the neutral starting number.
Navarro: 59.1 overall, down from 64. 591. receiving, down from 65. 59.7 run blocking, up from 49. Ditto Washington for not being open.
Gill: 49.3 overall, down from 51.2. 50.1 receiving, down from 55.5. 51.7 run blocking, up from 40.4.
Kirtz: 53.4 overall, up from 50.9. 53.1 receiving, up from 50.9. 62.1 run blocking, even from last week.
TE: Gordon is a revelation. He was an elite receiver off the line on Saturday after a solid start vs Nebraska. Coach Jake has to love this. While I wasn't overly impressed with Lang last year, he definitely showed he at least has the capability to run and catch a pass, unlike Mangieri, so PFF thinking he's having a good start to the year as a run blocker is a big deal. He's not starting well receiving per PFF, but given what we've seen before, if he can be a good run block focused TE who still has the ability to be a receiver occasionally across from Gordon, we're really potentially working with something out of a 12 set given our WR difficulties.
Gordon: 75.7 overall, up from 66.7. 78.4 receiving, up from 71. 53 run blocking, roughly even from 54.6.
Lang: 56 overall, down from 59.5. 45.4 receiving, down from 50.6. 70.2 run blocking, up from 65.7.
O Line: If you rewatch the game, I do not think you will disagree with the harsh grades across the right side of the line from PFF. When NU could run the ball, it was mostly off Schmidt or to the left, and the right side was a big problem in pass pro throughout the game. Hilinski did some things late to really help out his linemen, mostly by getting rid of the ball quickly underneath Duke's very soft late coverage.
Skoronski: 83.5 overall, even from 83.8 . 90.6 pass blocking, up from 84.3. 75.2 run blocking, down from 78.2. Pete remains elite. For his pass blocking to jump up that high from an already high score... PFF gave him an incredibly rare score for his performance in pass pro. Bottom line, he's great.
Priebe: 73.7 overall, slightly down from 75.9. 76.6 pass pro, slightly up from 73. 75.8 run blocking, down from 80.1. Priebe continues to grade to PFF and my eye as a very solid LG. He didn't have any massive run blocks last week like he did vs Nebby, so that took a bit of a hit, but was still solid. As an already good player, he definitely has an all-conference future written all over him.
Schmidt: 67.3 overall, down a little from 70.6. 58.2 pass pro, up from 50.7. 67.3 run blocking, down from 70.8. Schmidt continues to put in an all around respectable, if unflashy, performance.
Rowley: (in approx 3/4 of the RG snaps): 51.8 overall, up from 49.9. 58.9 pass pro, down from 70.7. 50.5 run blocking, up from 44.6, but still poor. Rowley has had problems with painful penalties in both games, which is depressing his overall score, but he also had quite a few visible problems to my eye blocking in this game. He got blown up in both pass pro and run blocking early in the game, leading to a couple broken plays. Run blocking on the right side was bad all game, and he allowed several more pressures in there. However, given the performance of his replacements when he was hurt, he's still probably the best option here. Bottom line, RG remains a concern from last year.
Wiederkehr: 58.7 overall, down from 70.8. 53.6 pass pro, down from 71.1. 59.1 run blocking, down from 69.1. PFF gave Wiederkehr abysmal grades in this game. I was focused on the right side of the line during my rewatch, and for the first three quarters while I wasn't surprised to see the poor run blocking grades on the right side (run plays to that side were a disaster all day), I didn't totally understand why he got savaged so badly in pass pro, clearly receiving a disaster level grade. Then the last 18-20 minutes of the game hit. Wiederkehr got absolutely worked by any rusher lined up against him on nearly the MAJORITY of plays down the stretch, leading to many hits and rushed passes for Hilinski. I've been a fan and defender of Wiederkehr around here, but his play in the fourth really was a train wreck, and he needs to be massively better. Sure, it's a tough spot when they know you're throwing every play, but man was it gross.
Picozzi: 20 snaps, mostly on the line. Picozzi got a 66.4 in pass blocking from PFF for his time in at right guard, and was on the field for only one running play, so he held his own. TBH I couldn't exactly tell when he was and wasn't on the field since it wasn't as obvious as when Wrather came in (and left), so I don't have a sense on this one. Given his pass pro performance though, we may need to see more Picozzi if Rowley is still dinged.
Wrather: 7 snaps. 61.3 overall, 76.2 pass pro, 59.9 run blocking. I don't know how PFF scored the disaster sack the Wrather and Schmidt allowed via a joint miscommunication (both turned to double team guys to their outside shoulders and ignored the DT in the 1 tech) on one of his first plays, but PFF thought he was fine otherwise. Anyways, it was only 7 plays, so not a lot to read into from a grade standpoint other than the coaches got him out of there. ALmost didn't bother to post this due to small sample size, but the RG situation seemed to be impossible to ignore.
I am NOT going to be doing this every week this season, primarily because I'm not paying the large upcharge for a premium subscription to weekly numbers, so I can only compare the new aggregate numbers with the week 0 grades and assume general grades. I may do a couple mid year updates on these. That means you'll need to average up a bit, ie, if a guy's grade increased from 60 to 70 after week 2, that means their week 2 was in the 80+ range, an elite performance.
I also had the opportunity to re-watch the Duke game today and have a lot of thoughts coming out of that as a result. As before, I'm not posting every single grade just the interesting ones.
As another reminder, these grades do not correlate to Madden grades or academic letter grades (ie, a grade in the high 60's is a respectable score and a grade of 80 is a phenomenal and elite score, not a D+, B-,) and these grades are also not adjusted by opponent. If you win your matchup and execute your assignment, you get a good score. If you don't, you get a bad score. It doesn't matter who you're lined up against. Also remember that penalties are scored against players overall scores, which has a noticeable impact on scores sometimes with big penalties. Last, the season long scores are just an average of all snaps or of game scores since the metric favors consistency, so a player who has one great game and one terrible game won't even out to average but will be graded a bit below that.
Offense overall:
Strengths and weaknesses abounded in this game on the offensive side. Generally, Hull and Gordon were totally unstoppable in the passing game and Jake did a great job constantly scheming them into positions where they had big matchup advantages over their defender. However, the run game was rough, especially to the right, and the receivers did little all day. It was still a good overall performance, (or rather, a GREAT performance by two skill guys while the line mostly gave enough to make things work) but much more a mixed bag than the defensive side (where it was just bad nearly everywhere).
QB:
Hilinski didn't get a very good score from PFF, but as I said in the week 1 write up, I honestly don't care about PFF QB ratings on Hilinski at all because we all watch him closely every play anyway. After my re watch, I do think some of the criticisms of him are very fair as he was late or behind receivers badly several times and couple of easily had several more INTs. But he also did some nice things in the game as well, especially recognizing his matchups, feeding Hull in stride, and moving the ball out quickly most of the time. I think the InsideNU writeup about the good and bad things he did was extremely fair and a good read. That article also had the premium fancy state PFF offers for a few hundred bucks.
RB:
Hull: 77.1 overall, even from 77.0. 67.8 running, down from 71.8. 92.1 pass catching, up from 86. Somewhat similar to his Nebraska performance, but slighly more extreme. PFF continues to think Hull is a decent but not remarkable runner of the football but a mega elite pass catcher out of the backfield. Can... anybody really disagree here?
Porter: 58.4 overall, down from 60.9 . 60.5 running, down from 62.2. 51.6 receiving, down from 53.7. Porter continues to look a little tentative out there and failed to move the pile given a couple chances vs Duke, which is a concern. My concerns about his injury recovery are definitely growing.
Clair: All of Clair's stats other than blocking were in the high 50's after both the Nebraska and Duke games, and it seems he's mostly being phased out.
WR: Help at receiver remains needed. Washington remains the guy who can flash some dynamic ability, but he still lacks size and wasn't open downfield, so when he doesn't do big things off of short passes, it's hard to be impressed. Navarro can at least catch and is tough, but he's also not often very open. Nobody else on the team has shown much at all this year, by my eyes.
Washington: 66.3 overall, down from 75.9. 66.4 receiving, down from 74.1. 69.9 run blocking, down from 72.8. Dropping a couple passes and generally not being open wasn't good for the score. These numbers dropping so much indicate he probably slipped under 60 for the week, the neutral starting number.
Navarro: 59.1 overall, down from 64. 591. receiving, down from 65. 59.7 run blocking, up from 49. Ditto Washington for not being open.
Gill: 49.3 overall, down from 51.2. 50.1 receiving, down from 55.5. 51.7 run blocking, up from 40.4.
Kirtz: 53.4 overall, up from 50.9. 53.1 receiving, up from 50.9. 62.1 run blocking, even from last week.
TE: Gordon is a revelation. He was an elite receiver off the line on Saturday after a solid start vs Nebraska. Coach Jake has to love this. While I wasn't overly impressed with Lang last year, he definitely showed he at least has the capability to run and catch a pass, unlike Mangieri, so PFF thinking he's having a good start to the year as a run blocker is a big deal. He's not starting well receiving per PFF, but given what we've seen before, if he can be a good run block focused TE who still has the ability to be a receiver occasionally across from Gordon, we're really potentially working with something out of a 12 set given our WR difficulties.
Gordon: 75.7 overall, up from 66.7. 78.4 receiving, up from 71. 53 run blocking, roughly even from 54.6.
Lang: 56 overall, down from 59.5. 45.4 receiving, down from 50.6. 70.2 run blocking, up from 65.7.
O Line: If you rewatch the game, I do not think you will disagree with the harsh grades across the right side of the line from PFF. When NU could run the ball, it was mostly off Schmidt or to the left, and the right side was a big problem in pass pro throughout the game. Hilinski did some things late to really help out his linemen, mostly by getting rid of the ball quickly underneath Duke's very soft late coverage.
Skoronski: 83.5 overall, even from 83.8 . 90.6 pass blocking, up from 84.3. 75.2 run blocking, down from 78.2. Pete remains elite. For his pass blocking to jump up that high from an already high score... PFF gave him an incredibly rare score for his performance in pass pro. Bottom line, he's great.
Priebe: 73.7 overall, slightly down from 75.9. 76.6 pass pro, slightly up from 73. 75.8 run blocking, down from 80.1. Priebe continues to grade to PFF and my eye as a very solid LG. He didn't have any massive run blocks last week like he did vs Nebby, so that took a bit of a hit, but was still solid. As an already good player, he definitely has an all-conference future written all over him.
Schmidt: 67.3 overall, down a little from 70.6. 58.2 pass pro, up from 50.7. 67.3 run blocking, down from 70.8. Schmidt continues to put in an all around respectable, if unflashy, performance.
Rowley: (in approx 3/4 of the RG snaps): 51.8 overall, up from 49.9. 58.9 pass pro, down from 70.7. 50.5 run blocking, up from 44.6, but still poor. Rowley has had problems with painful penalties in both games, which is depressing his overall score, but he also had quite a few visible problems to my eye blocking in this game. He got blown up in both pass pro and run blocking early in the game, leading to a couple broken plays. Run blocking on the right side was bad all game, and he allowed several more pressures in there. However, given the performance of his replacements when he was hurt, he's still probably the best option here. Bottom line, RG remains a concern from last year.
Wiederkehr: 58.7 overall, down from 70.8. 53.6 pass pro, down from 71.1. 59.1 run blocking, down from 69.1. PFF gave Wiederkehr abysmal grades in this game. I was focused on the right side of the line during my rewatch, and for the first three quarters while I wasn't surprised to see the poor run blocking grades on the right side (run plays to that side were a disaster all day), I didn't totally understand why he got savaged so badly in pass pro, clearly receiving a disaster level grade. Then the last 18-20 minutes of the game hit. Wiederkehr got absolutely worked by any rusher lined up against him on nearly the MAJORITY of plays down the stretch, leading to many hits and rushed passes for Hilinski. I've been a fan and defender of Wiederkehr around here, but his play in the fourth really was a train wreck, and he needs to be massively better. Sure, it's a tough spot when they know you're throwing every play, but man was it gross.
Picozzi: 20 snaps, mostly on the line. Picozzi got a 66.4 in pass blocking from PFF for his time in at right guard, and was on the field for only one running play, so he held his own. TBH I couldn't exactly tell when he was and wasn't on the field since it wasn't as obvious as when Wrather came in (and left), so I don't have a sense on this one. Given his pass pro performance though, we may need to see more Picozzi if Rowley is still dinged.
Wrather: 7 snaps. 61.3 overall, 76.2 pass pro, 59.9 run blocking. I don't know how PFF scored the disaster sack the Wrather and Schmidt allowed via a joint miscommunication (both turned to double team guys to their outside shoulders and ignored the DT in the 1 tech) on one of his first plays, but PFF thought he was fine otherwise. Anyways, it was only 7 plays, so not a lot to read into from a grade standpoint other than the coaches got him out of there. ALmost didn't bother to post this due to small sample size, but the RG situation seemed to be impossible to ignore.
