PFF Review: Which WVU players are returning on defense?

West Virginia lost a number of critical pieces from last season's team as head coach Neal Brown prepares for his first atop the program.

But who exactly returns and where did they grade out last season?

WVSports.com uses Pro Football Focus to look at which of the top 20 ranked defensive players for the entire 2018 season are coming back in 2019 and where they ranked in regards to the rest of the team.

But first a break down of how players are graded.

On every play, a PFF analyst will grade each player on a scale of -2 to +2 according to what he did on the play.

At one end of the scale you have a catastrophic game-ending interception or pick-six from a quarterback, and at the other a perfect deep bomb into a tight window in a critical game situation, with the middle of that scale being 0-graded, or ‘expected’ plays that are neither positive nor negative.

Each game is also graded by a second PFF analyst independent of the first, and those grades are compared by a third, Senior Analyst, who rules on any differences between the two. These grades are verified by the Pro Coach Network, a group of former and current NFL coaches with over 700 combined years of NFL coaching experience, to get them as accurate as they can be.

From there, the grades are normalized to better account for game situation; this ranges from where a player lined up to the dropback depth of the quarterback or the length of time he had the ball in his hand and everything in between. They are finally converted to a 0-100 scale and appear in our Player Grades Tool.

Season-level grades aren’t simply an average of every game-grade a player compiles over a season, but rather factor in the duration at which a player performed at that level. Achieving a grade of 90.0 in a game once is impressive, doing it (12) times in a row is more impressive.

It is entirely possible that a player will have a season grade higher than any individual single-game grade he achieved, because playing well for an extended period of time is harder to do than for a short period, Similarly, playing badly for a long time is a greater problem than playing badly once, so the grade can also be compounded negatively.

Each week, grades are subject to change while we run through our extensive review process including All-22 tape runs and coaching audit, so you may notice discrepancies among grades published in earlier articles compared with those in the Player Grades tool until grade lock each week.

--While West Virginia returns five of the top ten graded players by Pro Football Focus from last year on the defensive side, that number is a little misleading. Out of those five players, only two of those played over 200 snaps in DL Dante Stills (219) and CB Keith Washington (505). Expanding things out further for the entire list of those returning positioned inside the top 20 only three others saw over 200 snaps for the year in S JoVanni Stewart (731), LB Dylan Tonkery (305) and DL Darius Stills (310).

--That means out of the 11 players ranked inside the top 20 that will return in 2019, only five saw over 200 snaps on the season.

--In fact, five of the 11 saw under 50 total snaps for 2018 making their grades less reliable than those that saw significant time on the field. Among those on the list were No. 2 LB Exree Loe (37 snaps), No. 6 S Deamonte Lindsay (48 snaps), No. 11 LB Quondarius Qualls (3 snaps), No. 17 LB Adam Hensley (41 snaps) and No. 18 DE Stone Wolfley (23 snaps). So while those players graded out high, it's hard to determine what they would have been able to do over the course of a full complement of snaps.

--Two players that do have experience and will return this year that just narrowly missed the top 20 graded from 2018 are No. 21 DE Reese Donahue (63.7 grade and 477 snaps) and No. 22 CB Josh Norwood (63.1 grade and 631 snaps).

--Other notable performers that will return this coming year further down the list from the 2018 season would be No. 34 LB Shea Campbell (59.6 grade and 410 snaps) and No. 35 CB Hakeem Bailey (59.5 grade and 507 snaps).

--West Virginia also added Michigan graduate transfer Reuben Jones (graded out at 62.2 over 55 snap with the Wolverines last season).

--The Stills brothers are the only defensive linemen on the roster that saw over 200 snaps last season that will return in 2019.

--Much like you saw above the reverse is true for players that is exiting the program as each player inside the top 20 that won't return in 2019 saw at least 280 snaps outside of Jordan Adams who only played 25 as a reserve cornerback.

--West Virginia loses a wealth of experience up front with Jabril Robinson (504 snaps), Kenny Bigelow (482 snaps) and Ezekiel Rose (442 snaps) all exhausting their eligibility.

--Same can be said at safety where graduation took Dravon Askew-Henry (821 snaps) and Toyous Avery (725 snaps) and the transfer portal took Kenny Robinson (752 snaps) and Derrek Pitts (280 snaps).

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