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Published Sep 2, 2019
West Virginia Mountaineers Pro Football Focus Grades From James Madison
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Keenan Cummings  •  WVSports
Managing Editor
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@rivalskeenan

WVSports.com and the Rivals network has teamed up with Pro Football Focus, 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 against James Madison.

This is a free article, but for weeks moving forward, the majority of articles using PFF analytics will be premium articles.

This is the best time to sign up for a WVSports.com subscription! You will not want to miss out on the content that we will be producing!

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
*=Played less than 10 snaps.
PlayerPositionGrade

Tevin Bush

WR

80.1

Austin Kendall

QB

72.5

George Campbell

WR

69.1

Colton McKivitz

OL

63.2

Josh Sills

OL

62.5

Josh Hughes

OL

62.0

Michael Brown

OL

60.7

T.J. Simmons

WR

60.5

James Gmiter*

OL

60.0

Sean Ryan

WR

59.8

Chase Behrndt

OL

58.3

Randy Fields*

WR

57.8

Martell Pettaway

RB

57.7

Logan Thimons*

FB

57.3

Sam James

WR

55.9

Kennedy McKoy

RB

55.6

Bryce Wheaton*

WR

55.4

Jovani Haskins

TE

55.1

Kelby Wickline

OL

48.3

Mike O'Laughlin

TE

42.0

Alec Sinkfield*

RB

38.4

--Converted wide receiver Tevin Bush played only 23 snaps but was the highest rated on the team after turning four catches into 71 yards and a touchdown.

--In his first career start Austin Kendall was the second highest on the offense after connecting on 27-42 passes for 260 yards and two scores.

Defense
*=Played 10 snaps or less.
PlayerPositionGrade

Deamonte Lindsay*

LB

85.8

Exree Loe

LB

84.5

Kerry Martin

S

80.3

Darius Stills

DL

78.2

Hakeem Bailey

CB

74.8

Josh Chandler

LB

74.6

Dylan Tonkery

LB

72.9

Dante Stills

DL

72.5

Kwantel Raines

LB

70.2

Quondarius Qualls

LB

70.2

JoVanni Stewart

LB

67.6

Josh Norwood

S

67.5

Jeffery Pooler

DL

67.0

Sean Mahone

S

65.1

Nicktroy Fortune

CB

64.7

Reese Donahue

DL

64.7

Brenon Thrift

DL

64.4

Keith Washington

CB

64.1

Reuben Jones

DL

63.8

Jake Abbott

LB

61.0

Zach Sandwisch*

LB

60.0

Taijh Alston

DL

53.4

Tykee Smith*

S

53.1

Jake Long

S

52.8

Jordan Jefferson*

DL

50.4

TOTAL:

The West Virginia offense finished with a grade of 60.7

The unit received these grades for each facet.

Passing: 74.2

Pass Blocking: 83.3

Receiving: 61.8

Rushing: 53.4

Run Blocking: 47.3

--It comes as no surprise that West Virginia struggled in both rushing and run blocking after averaging only 1.4 yards per carry.

--Things were much better in the pass blocking department with a high mark of 83.3 after allowing only one sack.



The defense was much better finishing with a mark of 82.9.

The unit received these grades for each facet.

Rush Defense: 83.7

Tackle: 82.2

Pass Rush: 69.1

Defensive Coverage against Receivers: 76.5

--It was a solid debut overall for the defense who scored well in just about every area outside of pass rush and even that wasn't a poor mark.

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