Advertisement
football Edit

West Virginia Mountaineers Pro Football Focus Grades From NC State

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 NC State.

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:

West Virginia Mountaineers wide receiver Sam James was the team's highest graded offensive player.
West Virginia Mountaineers wide receiver Sam James was the team's highest graded offensive player.
Advertisement
Offense
Player Position Grade

Sam James

WR

86.6

Colton McKivitz

OL

81.0

Mike O'Laughlin

TE

75.7

Austin Kendall

QB

72.5

Ali Jennings

WR

71.6

Sean Ryan

WR

69.7

Kennedy McKoy

RB

69.1

Leddie Brown

RB

68.1

James Gmiter

OL

62.5

Briason Mays

OL

62.2

John Hughes

OL

62.1

T.J. Simmons

WR

62.0

George Campbell

WR

61.7

Chase Behrndt

OL

61.6

Logan Thimons

FB

60.4

Kelby Wickline

OL

59.1

Winston Wright

WR

58.3

Alec Sinkfield

RB

56.5

Isaiah Esdale*

WR

55.6

Randy Fields*

WR

54.8

Bryce Wheaton

WR

49.4

Jovani Haskins

TE

46.6

*=Played 10 snaps or less.

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

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Position Group Grade

West Virginia

Passing Offense

67.9

Receivers/Pass Routes

71.5

NC State

Coverage

59.3

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Position Group Grade

West Virginia

Rushing Offense

74.4

NC State

Run Defense

77.4

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Position Group Grade

West Virginia

Pass Blocking

85.4

Run Blocking

66.7

NC State

Pass Rush

58.4

Run Defense

77.4

DEFENSE:

West Virginia Mountaineers safety Tykee Smith was the team's highest graded defensive player.
West Virginia Mountaineers safety Tykee Smith was the team's highest graded defensive player.
Defense
Player Position Grade

Tykee Smith

S

90.9

Hakeem Bailey

CB

77.4

Keith Washington

CB

72.8

Jordan Jefferson

DL

69.6

Jake Long

S

68.5

JoVanni Stewart

LB

68.2

Nicktroy Fortune*

CB

66.2

Exree Loe

LB

65.0

Darius Stills

DL

64.7

Reese Donahue

DL

63.8

Quondarius Qualls

LB

63.5

Shea Campbell

LB

63.2

Kerry Martin

S

62.6

Reuben Jones

DL

61.6

Dante Stills

DL

61.4

Jeffery Pooler

DL

61.3

Kwantel Raines

LB

60.3

Zach Sandwisch*

LB

60.2

Josh Chandler

LB

59.9

Dylan Tonkery

LB

58.5

Sean Mahone

S

49.1

Josh Norwood

S

48.4

Deamonte Lindsay*

LB

39.1

*=Played 10 snaps or less.

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

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Position Group Grade

NC State

Passing Offense

43.1

Receivers/Pass Routes

57.7

West Virginia

Coverage

78.6

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Position Group Grade

NC State

Rushing Offense

73.5

West Virginia

Run Defense

72.4

Pro Football Focus Grades
Team Position Group Grade

NC State

Pass Blocking

73.3

Run Blocking

56.4

West Virginia

Pass Rush

59.9

Run Defense

72.4

WATCH: Musings from the Mountains - NC State Recap Episode 21

----------

• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.

SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.

• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel

• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @PatrickKotnik

•Like us on Facebook

Advertisement