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West Virginia Mountaineers PFF Grades from Iowa State

WVSports.com and the Rivals network has teamed up with PFF, the go-to site for player grades and advanced analytics in both college football and the NFL. We will incorporate PFF data into stories regularly going forward, and one thing you can look forward to each week is a grade for all of West Virginia's players from the previous game by their scale.

In this article, we use the PFF grades to show you how the Mountaineers performed during their 42-6 loss to Iowa State.

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.

OFFENSE:

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Offense
Player Position Grade

Jarret Doege

QB

75.5

Winston Wright

WR

75.0

Sean Ryan

WR

71.4

Isaiah Esdale

WR

69.8

Garrett Greene*

QB

69.4

James Gmiter

OG

66.7

Parker Moorer

OT

66.6

Zach Frazier

OG

65.7

Brandon Yates

OT

65.4

Chase Behrndt

C

62.4

Michael Brown

OG

62.4

Briason Mays

OT

60.7

Leddie Brown

HB

58.8

Alec Sinkfield

HB

56.0

Reese Smith

WR

55.0

Charles Finley*

TE

54.5

T.J. Simmons

WR

52.1

Sam Brown

WR

50.8

Ali Jennings

WR

45.5

Mike O'Laughlin

TE

42.6

*=Played 10 snaps or less

West Virginia's offense vs. Iowa State's defense

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Position Group Grade

West Virginia

Passing Offense

72.0

Receivers/Pass Routes

57.2

Iowa State

Coverage

69.6

Pro Football Focus Grades
Column 1 Column 2 Column 3

West Virginia

Rushing Offense

67.9

Iowa State

Run Defense

79.8

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Column 2 Column 3

West Virginia

Pass Blocking

80.2

Run Blocking

61.1

Iowa State

Pass Rush

59.4

Run Defense

79.8

DEFENSE:

Defense
Player Position Grade

Dante Stills

DT

74.9

Exree Loe

LB

73.4

Akheem Mesidor

DE

70.9

Darius Stills

DT

69.7

VanDarius Cowan

Bandit

66.2

Dreshun Miller

CB

63.4

Alonzo Addae

FS

62.2

Jackie Matthews*

CB

62.1

Jake Long*

FS

60.7

Sean Mahone

FS

56.3

Nicktroy Fortune

CB

55.6

Tykee Smith

Spear

55.3

Jeffery Pooler Jr.

DE

55.1

Jordan Jefferson*

DT

55.0

Jalen THornton*

DT

53.1

Josh Chandler-Semedo

LB

51.1

Quay Mays

DT

51.0

Taijh Alston

DE

44.0

Tony Fields II

LB

31.8

*= Played 10 snaps or less

West Virginia's defense vs. Iowa State's offense

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Position Group Grade

Iowa State

Passing Offense

90.6

Receivers/Pass Routes

77.9

West Virginia

Coverage

47.8

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Position Group Grade

Iowa State

Rushing Offense

West Virginia

Run Defense

67.9

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Position Group Grade

Iowa State

Pass Blocking

89.1

Run Blocking

63.0

West Virginia

Pass Rush

55.4

Run Defense

67.9

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