Honestly, I'm surprised you would expect anything else from this guy. He has a clear narrative to push (TT sucks at everything including drafting players), and in some twisted way Corey Linsley, a 4th round pick starting at center (and doing a pretty good job of it) not making the pro bowl is some sort of feather in his cap of confirmation bias.
What seems more likely, that professionals who run a respected website dedicated to grading football players has no idea what they are talking about, or that some random fan on an internet forum doesn't know what they are talking about? Uff, unless you can provide a more respected and reliable source for offensive lineman grades your blatant attempt to discredit anything that doesn't fit your narrow world view is nothing more than exactly that.
Originally Posted by: earthquake
First, Linsley was a 5th round pick. You are making the tie in to something to try and build your own narrative that I'm trying to build one of my own. I'm not. I just wondered about us overhyping one of our own as we usually do.
PFF is run by professionals? Are you sure? I worked in sports broadcasting for many years. So, you think PFF is a reliable source on OL play? Why? Is it because you don't know and don't have anywhere else to to turn so you've abdicated trying to determine for yourself and just let PFF do it for you because you know they know more than you which then you conclude makes them authoritative? I hope you see how ridiculous that is.
EDIT: Here's a link to the history of PFF...
https://www.profootballfocus.com/about/history/ I found their answer very underwhelming to this FAQ...
3) How do you know exactly what a player’s job is on any given play and whether negatives were his fault?
This question obviously changes depending on the position and the specific play. Much of our methodology can be found in our explanation of our grading, but we will go into a quick summary:
• Pass Protection
This is a measure of how much total pressure a player gives away during a game. It isn’t a simple formula like -1.5 for a sack, -1 for a hit, as time taken to get the pressure is also very important. This is then normalized by adding a small positive factor for every drop-back he played. It is usually simple enough to determine what a player’s assignment is in pass protection, as we have the benefit of being able to watch one player closely and specifically multiple times. It is possible that a blocker is directed by the quarterback to take a specific man, resulting in a pass rusher that appears to be his responsibility getting a pressure and us grading that blocker down. This is an inherent inaccuracy in the grading, but despite this potential inaccuracy we have had NFL sources, including Bengals OG Evan Mathis, confirm that our grades are accurate, and reflect closely what they receive as internal feedback. There may be an inherent margin of error in what we do, but it is still more accurate than anything outside of a team meeting room.
• Run Blocking
Again, it is rare not to be able to determine where a run was supposed to go, and what a blocker’s assignment was on a particular play. Players don’t make the kind of mental lapses often that would see them going to a totally different place than where they should have been. If they did they wouldn’t be in the league long. If a player attempts a block on somebody, whether they win the encounter or lose it, it was almost certainly their assignment on the play. This is obviously not easy to pick up live and in real time, but again we have the benefit of being able to go back retrospectively and watch multiple replays of a play developing to get the information.
• Coverage
Assignments in coverage can be a more difficult matter, specifically in the middle of the field when applied to LBs and safeties. Because when a TE, HB or WR finds a seam, the determination of whose responsibility that is becomes trickier. Some other analysts have decided to apportion the yardage out amongst the players involved, but frankly we don’t believe this is worth the effort. In addition, if it’s a touchdown, do you award half a TD? Because of the inherent issues with the statistics mentioned above we just go for the simple approach and take the closest player when the ball is thrown, understanding inaccuracy is built in.
Ted Thompson sits on his hands per former GM: "because they’ve had 25 fricking years of great quarterbacks. Of course it works. Try it without a special quarterback."