Aloha Skoloholics! What more can you say about that game? Wow, what a great time it was to watch that second half of football. As we know, the first half was NOT very much fun to watch. How did each facet of the team do yesterday? Which positional groups did well, which didn’t? Pro Football Focus has their own grading system, which uses a unique approach where they grade each player on each play and apply those results to the aggregate. Like all grading systems, it’s a useful tool and an opinion, not a be-all-end-all answer. Much of this is behind a paywall, so I won’t bother linking to it, but here is a link to the PFF site.
It’s interesting for me to see how PFF grades each game. I like to use stats and analysis to check my own “eye test” of the game, as I am fully aware of the limitations to relying on the eye test, and using other forms of analysis sometimes helps me to discover flaws in my analysis. If we aren’t getting better, we’re getting worse, right?
Let’s see what PFF thinks of how the various facets of the Vikings team graded in yesterday’s miraculous comeback win.
Overall Team Grade: 73.3
Offense
Overall: 67.3
Passing: 56.6
Pass Blocking: 69.9
Receiving: 71.7
Rushing: 58.8
Run Blocking: 60.4
Defense
Overall: 76.0
Run Defense: 78.3
Tackling: 82.9
Pass Rush: 58.3
Coverage: 74.2
Special Teams: 43.1
Summary
I saw a few things that stood out to me. It might surprise someone that a team can get such a low passing grade when you pass for over 450 yards and 3 touchdowns, but for those of us who watched the first half, we understand. Also, there were 2 intereceptions, which hurt the grade, but only one of those was on the person passing the ball, the other was all on Reagor.
I thought the pass rush grade would be higher, as it seemed that Donatell was dialing up more blitzes, and they seemed to be effective. They may not have resulted in sacks, but the pressure helped to hold the Colts passing offense to fewer than 200 yards. I honestly can’t remember the last time we held a team to fewer than 200 yards. The Vikings defense scored very high for rush defense and for tackling, which is not surprising to me at all.
The special teams grade did not surprise me at all. The Vikings gave up a punt block TD, and the coverage seemed to be bad to horrible on nearly every kickoff.
What do you think, folks? Do the PFF grades align with what you watched?
Interesting offense passing was that low
I think the abysmal first half along with the two interceptions and 8 sacks played a big part. Lots of breakdown at positions to create those plays.
What was the grade for the officiating??
Accurate
I’ve tried not to harp on it too much in the words up top, but yeah, the officiating was horrrendous. One of the worsely officiated games I’ve watched in a long time.