Rivals.com has teamed with Pro Football Focus and as part of that we can provide incredibly detailed statistics on the West Virginia football team.
Today, we take a look at how the true freshmen graded out against Penn State. We will be tracking this all season and updating after each game.
In this article, we use the PFF grades to show you how the true freshmen Mountaineers performed to date as well as statistics.
But first, an explanation from PFF on how the grading scale works:
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.
Game 1: Penn State: Total Snaps 11 | Grade of 57.6
Ray emerged in fall camp with his level of play and saw the field on 11 total snaps and there is room for that role to continue to grow. He finished with 2 catches for 7 yards, but had potential for much more with a misfire on one attempt and a drop on another. A pure outside wide receiver that can run, Ray should have more attempts moving forward as he continues to become more comfortable with the speed of the college game.
Game 1: Penn State: Total Snaps 1 | Grade of 60.0
Gallagher did have a role on special teams but played only one snap on the offensive side of the ball for West Virginia in his true freshman debut. And on that snap, Gallagher was asked to run block so there weren't any catch opportunities. Like Ray, the Pennsylvania native has the opportunity for his role to increase throughout the year.
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