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College Football Focus has Arrived
Some interesting draft nuggets from Pro Football Focus...“What if you guys could do the college game?”
It was an offhand comment from a man we respected working in the front office of an NFL team as we discussed NFL free agency and some of the guys available to his team. It was always something that had us biting our tongue somewhat because we don’t like it when we’re unable to do something.
Fast forward two years and a lot has changed. After an arduous process of trialing, testing, and recruiting that started during the middle of the 2013 season, Pro Football Focus is proud to announced that we have gone to college and finished our first class. 870 FBS games (and a couple of All Star ones) have got the PFF treatment. Every player of every game on every play has been put the under our microscope in a project that we have very originally titled College Football Focus.
Whether you’re a five star recruit at Alabama or a walk on Iowa State you’ve got exactly the same opportunity to impress our graders, and that is the driving force behind “CFF”. We don’t want to follow the pack, but rather find things that others are not. We don’t want to confirm what you know, but make you think. We want to do more and do it more comprehensively.
While there will be no comparable premium section available for subscription to the general public, we will be using the data to generate content that will be free for everyone to read and absorb on the site in the coming weeks. Expect profiles on players. Expect breakdowns on positional groups. Expect mock drafts on what we would do. And expect us to listen to your feedback because we’re all in on this.
College Football Focus is no longer our dream, but our reality. And we hope you enjoy it.
To start the ball rolling here is a the first podcast where Sam Monson and Steve Palazzolo take you through the process and what you can expect as well as a few player teases of information...
http://pffpodcast.podbean.com/mf/web/2jz5ut/CFFPodcast1.mp3
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pff-podcast/id913714358?mt=2
Android: http://pffpodcast.podbean.com/feed/
Beginning in 2007, Pro Football Focus graded every NFL player on every play and produced reports and statistics on player performance for its own website as well as about half the teams in the NFL. Last season PFF added college football. The tape junkies analyzed 870 major-college games from every major conference, producing data similar to the NFL analysis.
PFF has some good information on the draftable players. Such as:
Overrated? A sure-fire top-five pick, USC defensive tackle Leonard Williams, was underproductive in obvious passing situations. On third-and-long he produced only eight pressures (two hits, six hurries) on 94 pass rushes. That earned a Pass-Rush Productivity number of 6.4, well below the class average for interior defensive linemen of 7.6.
Mariota loves play-action. Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota led the nation using play-action, going with it on 53.8 percent of his dropbacks. Alex Smith led the NFL last season with 31 percent play-action.
Mariota took more sacks than he should. Mariota was sacked 23 percent of the time he was pressured, the sixth-highest rate among quarterbacks in the draft class. Florida State’s Jameis Winston was sacked only 11.5 percent of his pressured dropbacks, second-best in the class.
Rising star of the week. Because NFL teams are more interested than ever in safeties who can play down in the box and can cover slot receivers and occasionally tight ends, versatile Penn State product Adrian Amos is generating buzz lately. At 6-1 and 214, his work as a slot corner resulted in opposing quarterbacks having a 3.4 NFL passer rating when throwing at him in those situations, lowest of any coverage player on slot receivers in 2014.
Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty has a good deep arm. Petty completed 34 of 95 passes on balls thrown at least 20 yards downfield. They went for 1,472 yards, 20 touchdowns and one interception. The 20 touchdowns led all FBS quarterbacks on such deep throws, while the yardage total was second-highest.
A surprising three-technique prospect. In the PFF pass-rushing system that takes into account where the player rushes from and the game situation, Missouri defensive end Shane Ray was the most productive player. Interestingly, the second-ranked player was Louisiana-Lafayette defensive tackle Christian Ringo.
There’s another cornerback in Oregon. Ducks corner Ifo Ekpre-Olomu has received plenty of attention from the draft community, but he wasn’t the most impressive draft-eligible corner on the team according to PFF. That was Troy Hill. Ekrpe-Olomu allowed a 58.7 percent completion rate and a passer rating of 82.2 on throws into his coverage, while Hill held opponents to a 45.3 percent completion rate and opposing quarterbacks to a 63.9 rating. Hill did that while being targeted more often.
