PFF Rankings after Week 4

[River Dog]

I know that most of you don't put a lot of weight on these rankings and gradings, but I think that they're relevant and worthy of our attention. Below are the Seahawk players that had enough snaps to qualify for a ranking at each position along with the top ranked player after Week 4. The number in parenthesis is the number of players that got enough snaps to qualify for a ranking.

QB (38) Sam Darnold, #3. Top Ranked: Marcus Mariota, Commanders.
WR (115) JSN, #2. Cooper Kupp, #32. Tory Horton, #45. Top Ranked: Puca Nacua, Rams.
RB (55) Kenneth Walker, #4. Zach Charbonnet, #31. Top Ranked: Kam Skattebow, NYG.
TE (70) AJ Barner, #9. Eric Saubert, #36. Elijah Arroyo, #39. Top Ranked: Jackson Hawes, Bills.
Center (35) Jalen Sundell, #27. Top Ranked: Aaron Brewer, Fins.
Guard (77) Grey Zabel, #31. Anthony Bradford, #59. Top Ranked: Ed Ingram, Texans.
Tackle (73) Charles Cross, #11. Abe Lucas, #29. Top Ranked: Pennei Sewell, Lions.

CB (103) Derion Kendrick, #1. Devon Witherspoon, #15. Josh Jobe, #52. Tariq Woolen, #100. Top Ranked: Derion Kendrick, Hawks.
Safety (79) Ty Okada, #25. Julian Love, #41. Top Ranked: Xavier Woods, Titans.
LB(74) Ernest Jones, #18. Tyrice Knight, #35. Drake Thomas, #57. Top Ranked: Fred Warner, Niners.
DT (119) Leonard Williams, #15. Byron Murphy, #34. Jarron Reed, #45. Top Ranked: Maliek Collins, Browns.
DE (116) Boye Mafe, #39. Uchenna Nwosu, #45. Derick Hall, #49. DeMarcus Lawrence, #55. Top Ranked: Micah Parsons, Packers.

Those are very good rankings for our players. On defense, of the 16 Seahawks that qualified for a ranking, all but two were ranked in the top half of those that met the minimum snaps, and you guessed it: CB Tariq Woolen, #100 out of 103 ranked was the lowest graded Seahawk on our team. LB Drake Thomas was also ranked in the bottom 50%. (To be fair, Safety Julian Love was #41 out of 79 ranked safeties, but I figured it was close enough for government work).

On offense, we had 14 players that qualified for a ranking, and all but three ranked in the top 50%: Center Jalen Sundell, RB Zach Charbonnet, and OG Anthony Bradford. Four players on offense, QB Darnold, WR JSN, TE AJ Barner and RB K9 were ranked in the top 10. OY Charles Cross just missed at #11.

And as before, if you have a specific question about a player, on the Hawks or otherwise, please don't hesitate to post a comment and I'll look it up.

[NorthHawk]

The frustrating thing about Woolen is his potential is off the charts.
For some reason he seems to lose focus and big plays happen but then he comes up with a great play that few others can make. I wish he could put it all together but I'm not sure he will ever do so.

To me, Jobe looks like one of the better CB's and it's odd to see him ranked at 52. I don't think there are 51 other CBs playing better this year. As well, Leonard Williams has been dominating at DT and I think he should be in the top 5 - 10 from the games I have seen. I don't see many others play as consistently well as Williams. Some have real good plays but disappear for a stretch, but I haven't seen that from Williams. He's just consistently good.

[River Dog]

The frustrating thing about Woolen is his potential is off the charts.
For some reason he seems to lose focus and big plays happen but then he comes up with a great play that few others can make. I wish he could put it all together but I'm not sure he will ever do so.

To me, Jobe looks like one of the better CB's and it's odd to see him ranked at 52. I don't think there are 51 other CBs playing better this year. As well, Leonard Williams has been dominating at DT and I think he should be in the top 5 - 10 from the games I have seen. I don't see many others play as consistently well as Williams. Some have real good plays but disappear for a stretch, but I haven't seen that from Williams. He's just consistently good.

Yeah, some of those rankings look a little off to me, too, and not just Hawks being ranked too low. IMO Kenneth Walker is not the 4th highest performing RB in the league and shouldn't be ranked ahead of Johnathan Taylor.

And we have to keep in mind that PFF ranks every player on every play. Neither you nor I look that closely at a single player, especially at positions like safety where half the plays they don't even appear on our TV screens. If a cornerback has great coverage on the side of the field opposite of where the ball is going, we'll never see it.

Marcus Mariota has played in just two games yet he's the highest ranked QB despite having a passer rating below 100. Lamar Jackson has a passer rating of 130 yet he's ranked at #26, bottom half of all QB's. But if you saw him play Sunday night, you'd understand why. Rumor is that he gave up on his team.

So clearly, there's some strange stuff in those rankings. Nevertheless, it's still relevant.

[NorthHawk]

There are two problems with any evaluation service. One is the human factor and the other is statistics that can make things look worse or better than they are.
However, these might be overcome if there is time to actually dig deeper, but they only have a couple of days and I'm not sure that's enough to really evaluate every player on every play.
And I think this is true for all sites, but I guess it's a good starting point for discussion if nothing else.

[River Dog]

There are two problems with any evaluation service. One is the human factor and the other is statistics that can make things look worse or better than they are.
However, these might be overcome if there is time to actually dig deeper, but they only have a couple of days and I'm not sure that's enough to really evaluate every player on every play.
And I think this is true for all sites, but I guess it's a good starting point for discussion if nothing else.

As with any information gathering, the larger the sample size, the more confidence we can have in the accuracy of the result. It's still early in the season, and some of these players, like Mariota, haven't played a whole lot.

I'm not sure how PFF delegates their work. I know that they have multiple evaluators looking at a single player, but do they all look at every single play, or do they split it up by having some of them grade the first half and others grading the 2nd half? Is there a limit to how many plays a single evaluator can analyze?

As I keep going back to, there's a lot of very smart football people who put a lot of trust in PFF's system, so it should be good enough for us armchair quarterbacks. I use it for a heads up, players to keep an eye on. For example, I had no idea that Derion Kendrick was playing so well as to be the top ranked cornerback. However, he's played just 99 defensive snaps vs. Josh Jobe's 257. But I'll damn sure pay attention this weekend. You and I both have complained about our IOL, and sure enough, our center and right guard are both ranked in the bottom 1/4. Sure meets the eye test, doesn't it?