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Notes on PFF’s Patriots grades: Week 8 Rams

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We’ll be back later this week with a look at PFF’s cumulative grades for the season, but for now here are our observations from their grades for the Pats against the Rams.

Best Offensive Grade: Gronk 6.7

Worst Offensive Grade: Branch -1.2

Best Defensive Grade: Brandon Spikes 2.6

Worst Defensive Grade: Justin Francis -1.5

Spikes tied for his best coverage game of the season with a 1.5 (also got a 1.5 vs. Titans) and a pass defended. Though he didn’t get credit for a single stop in the run game. That’s a first.

Alfonzo Dennard had the best defensive back score with a 1.2 in coverage. He only allowed one catch on three targets.

No Patriots defender was in the red for coverage. Wow, let’s all take a breath and enjoy that one for a moment.

Off the edges and behind the right guard were the two most deadly running holes for the Pats running backs.

The Pats were credited here with 9 blitzes on 33 plays, good for 27%. This doesn’t seem as high as I expected to be, perhaps it was just the complexity of the blitzes that drew the attention. Double A gap and double edge blitzes were run a couple times.

Dan Connolly was a dominant 3.1 in run blocking and looks like he’s starting to find his groove at RG. His pass blocking was a -1.8 though.

Ryan Wendell had his best pass blocking game of the season with a 1.1.

Spikes was a surprise as the third ranked pass rusher on the day with a 1.2.

Vince Wilfork had his second best score of the season, and it was just a -0.1. More on this coming later in the week, because through half of the season Wilfork is the worst graded Patriots defender and I don’t agree with it.

Solid game for Kyle Love with a 1.3, his best score since week two. He was especially good in the run game. Positive sign for Love, we need him to start elevating his play.

Chandler Jones got his best pass rush grade of the season with a 2.8, but his 4 stops are almost more impressive.

Marquice Cole had an impressive 1.2 on the day. Hope he’s not hurt and gets more of a shot at slot corner, he really flashed some promise there.

Rams blitzed on 11 of 35 snaps and Brady ate them up when they did for 107 yards and two touchdowns.

See our full season of PFF notes here.

Notes on PFF’s Patriots grades: Week 7 Jets

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Let’s try to dig into these rankings and see if we can find some positives:

Best Offensive Grade: Sebastian Vollmer (3.8)

Worst Offensive Grade: Brandon Lloyd (-3.3)

Best Defensive Grade: Ron Ninkovich (4.0)

Worst Defensive Grade: Vince Wilfork (-4.2)

These Wilfork grades are really making me second guess how much weight I put into PFF’s posts. No one can tell me he was the worst player on the field for the Patriots against the Jets, just like I find it a stretch that he’s been in the red for 5 of the last 6 weeks.

The offensive line was solid across the board with the exception of Nick McDonald who came in with a second-worst -1.8.

Brandon Spikes was graded with 8 stops, his season best.

Jerod Mayo was the second highest rated defender and looks to be putting together the best season of his career.

Starting corners Arrington (-1.0 in coverage) and Dennard (-.5 in coverage) were thrown at 16 times and gave up 13 receptions.

Brady threw six passes down the deep left part of the field, and only connected on one, Gronk’s first TD. Clearly the wanted to attack that area, but Lloyd’s drops certainly didn’t help.

Gronk took a -2.9 in run blocking. Sounds more and more like that’s an area he still trying to get back to 100% in after his ankle injury last year.

It was a balanced running attack at each of the gaps, but the most successful was behind Vollmer. Solder and McDonald struggled the most.

Kyle Love graded in the green the first two weeks but his performances have been down the last four games. If there was one area in the front seven I’d like to upgrade next off-season it’s Love’s spot. At least at this point.

Tavon Wilson came out with a 1.8 grade and still has yet to be in the red this year. I still think he might be the best safety on the roster.

Solder was in the green for pass blocking (1.7), in the red for run blocking (-1.4).

Notes on PFF’s Patriots grades: Week 6 Seahawks

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ProFootballFocus.com’s grades are out and here’s what stood out to us.

Best Offensive Grade: Ryan Wendell (3.3)

Worst Offensive Grade: Nate Solder (-2.7) and an especially horrid -4.9 in pass protection.

Best Defensive Grade: Devin McCourty (2.1)

Worst Defensive Grade: Kyle Love/Jermaine Cunningham (-2.1)

First things first, I think fans need to lay off of McCourty a bit. He’s not without his flaws, but he’s closest thing to a real professional defensive back that we have. He remains a building block as I see it, and would benefit immensely from a safety that he trusted over the top of him. He was targeted 3 times covering Baldwin and didn’t give up a catch to him.

Vince Wilfork was graded in the red for the 4th time in the last 5 games with a -2.0, including a -1.9 in run defense. We always take this ratings with a grain of salt, but by PFF’s measurements Wilfork is having a bad season.

Jermaine Cunningham played his most extensive snaps since 2010 but was still tied for worst graded defender. Myron Pryor could potentially compete for his role as a sub package interior rusher if he comes back this week. Cunningham does not seem to be excelling there and I’m starting to be unsure if he’s got a long term future in New England.

Kyle Arrington had a -1.2 in pass coverage, an area he’s graded negatively in every game. He’s finally been playing a role we thought he’d excel in (nickel slot) but his struggles continue. I also don’t think he’s got much more of a future with the Pats past this season unless it’s as a dime back.

Average outing for Brandon Spikes, really good in run defense/pass rush (1.4/1.2), bad in coverage (team worst -1.6).

Tavon Wilson got a 0.0 score in pass coverage. Not sure how that happens. The 46-yard game winning TD was the only credited catch on him.

Kyle Love has scored progressively worse and worse every game this season, except one minor spike up to 0.0 last week before falling to the team-worst -2.1 this week. Need more of an impact out of him.

Woodhead had a solid day and has stacked two solid back to back green scores for the first time in his Patriots career.

Mankins struggled in run blocking (-1.9), but was solid in pass coverage (1.4).

Brady was 3-for-3 for 101 yards and a TD throwing to the deep left. Rare.

Awful game for Ridley who was in the red in both the running game (-1.3) and passing game (-1.5).

Dan Connolly had an average score, but has been slowly improving in each game this season. Hopefully that trend continues and he’ll be in the green this week.

Notes on PFF’s Patriots grades: Week 5 Broncos

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The ProFootballFocus.com Patriots grades are in for the Broncos game and here are the numbers that stood out to me.

Best Offensive Grade: Mankins 6.0 – dominant effort in all aspects, this is a very positive development considering he didn’t even play last weekend.

Worst Offensive Grade: Wendell -3.3 – just can’t quite wrap my head around Wendell.  His grades have been generally solid until this week.

Best Defensive Grade: Chandler Jones 2.9, 2 QB hits, 3 QB hurries – Jones didn’t stand out to me as the best player on the defense, that would be Ninkovich who came in 3rd on defense with a 1.4.

Worst Defensive Grade: Jermaine Cunningham -2.1 – I didn’t think Cunningham was the worst defender on the field, but the graders didn’t think highly of his pass rush, scoring him just a -1.8.

We suspected it was the first bad week of the season for Vollmer and these scorers agreed giving him a -1.5.

Might be a tough week to read too much into Spikes’ -1.4 (-1.9 pass coverage). Clearly he can still be exploited in the passing game. He was targeted 6 times and gave up 5 catches for 53 yards, including 39 yards in YAC.

Secondary Coverage Rankings:

  1. Dennard 2.4
  2. McCourty 0.4
  3. Dowling 0.2
  4. Arrington -0.1
  5. Wilson -0.3
  6. Chung -1.2

Tom Brady didn’t attempt a pass in the 10-19 yard range. He was 1-for-5 on 20+ yarders, the other 24 attempts were either behind the LOS or 0-9 yards.

The running game was dominant running behind Mankins (4.8) and Solder (3.2). Off left tackle was good too (2.3).

Von Miller scored the highest rating I can remember ever seeing, a 12.3!?!?!

Great day for Jerod Mayo. 3 stops, a sack and a hurry, plus a 1.5 pass rush rating. BB needs to send him more I think.

I never read too much into these ratings but Vince Wilfork is having a down year by their scorers. His five game scores: 2.3, -1.2, -1.7, -0.2, -1.1. His -2.1 pass rush was the worst on the team against the Broncos.

See all our PFF notes here. And for all our written Pats analysis click here.

Notes on PFF’s Patriots grades: Week 4 Bills

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I love when PFF’s grades come out early! Here are some notables on their scores.

Best Offensive Grade: Daniel Fells (4.5)

Best Defensive Grade: Brandon Spikes (5.1 – highest defensive grade of the year)

Worst Offensive Grade: Deion Branch (-1.3)

Worst Defensive Grade: Steve Gregory/Kyle Love (-1.2)

Spikes’ season has been as extremely up and down as one could get. He was the worst rated defender in week one, 2nd best in week two, worst in week three, and now best in week four.

McCourty was the second best rated defender and he’s starting to look like a pro bowl cornerback again. He was targeted 6 times and only gave up two catches, as well as picking off two.

Kyle Love had a tough game as we expected him to. He’s not at his best trying to get upfield, and he was helpless against the Bills quick passing attack.

Vince Wilfork’s numbers show you how you can’t read too much into these numbers. He played a monster game but scored just a -0.7.

Solid 1.3 for Jermaine Cunningham, we knew his interior rush would be hugely important. He wasn’t dominant but he made some noise with a QB hit, a hurry and a stop.

Steve Gregory has been unspectacular, not that any of us expected him to be spectacular, but his performance against the Bills has us starting to wonder if Tavon Wilson will get more of a shot in the base defense now.

Ninkovich was the third ranked defender and was a 1.4 in run defense which given his spot is huge. He had 5 stops too.

Fells is a surprise to take the best score honor, but he was dominant in run blocking scoring a 4.1. Gronk scored a 4.6 in run blocking.

Sebastian Vollmer is putting together quite a nice season so far, he’s had high scores for the last three games. He’s their best offensive lineman so far. Now if he can just stay healthy.

Donald Thomas and Ryan Wendell both had -1.5 in pass protection. Along with Branch’s overall these were the only red grades for the offense.

The running game recorded a staggering 9.2 score running off tackle left. That’s where Fells and Gronk did most of their blocking damage. The ran well between the LG and C as well.

As expected Buffalo did most of their passing damage in the middle of the field, especially short.

Don’t look now, Tom Brady was 2-3 for 66 yards and a TD down the right side plus 20-yards.

See all our PFF Notes here.

Notes on PFF’s Patriots grades: Week 3 Ravens

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The grades are out and here are the things that I found most interesting:

Top Defensive Player: Devin McCourty (1.3)

Top Offensive Player: Tom Brady (6.9)

Worst Defensive Player: Brandon Spikes (-4.8)

Worst Offensive Player: Julian Edelman (-1.7)

Let’s start on the defensive side of the ball since that’s where there’s the most to talk about.

Brandon Spikes has been as up and down in the first three games as one can possibly be. He was the lowest graded defender in weeks 1 and 3, and the second highest graded defender in week 2. His -2.7 run defense score is glaring, especially with only 2 tackles and 1 stop. For a middle linebacker that is unacceptable. I can handle his poor coverage (-1.1) but if he’s not blowing up the run he’s useless out there. He did give up 88 yards on 3 pass completions as well.

Dont’a Hightower was the second lowest graded defender with a -2.0. Hard to get too down on a rookie in a game of this magnitude so early in his career, but if you want to know why the run defense was so bad the brunt of the blame has to come to him and Spikes.

Jerod Mayo was slight below average with a -0.9, but he did have 10 tackles and 5 stops.

The Patriots only had McCourty in the green for a positive grade in this game, he was thrown at 12 times and gave up just 6 completions.

Tavon Wilson gave up 3 receptions on 3 targets but only 1 yard of YAC.

Kyle Arrington struggled against Anquan Bolden giving up 3 catches on 4 targets for 43 yards.

The PFF graders gave the Pats a QB hit (Ninkovich) and 12 QB hurries. The official NFL game book gave them zero QB hits. Love and Jones were both credited with 4 hurries.

Vince Wilfork scored a -1.7. In last year’s AFCCG he scored a 7.0.

You know it’s a bad pass rush day when your two best pass rush scores are Kyle Love (0.3) and Ron Brace (0.2). Jones had a 0.1 and everyone else was at 0 or below. Yikes.

Well that paints the picture for the defense how about the offense…

Sebastian Vollmer played the whole game and was the third highest graded player on offense with a 3.6. He was in the green in both pass and run blocking , the only o-lineman to do so. This is a positive development.

Connolly (-1.9) and Mankins (-2.9) struggled in run blocking. Mankins was a positive 1.5 in pass blocking though.

Gronk was a -1.1 in run blocking, but 1.1 in pass blocking. The scorers had him staying in to pass block on only 8 plays.

Ryan Wendell was a positive 1.6 in run blocking, tying him with Vollmer. He has been one of the biggest surprises early this season.

Brady was lights out, but only 1 of 3 beyond 20 yards. He was most deadly in the middle of the field at 10-19 yards, where he was 5-5 for 80 yards. 25 of his 41 passes were under 10 yards away or behind the line of scrimmage.

Brandon Lloyd tore Cary Williams up for 8 catches on 10 targets for 98 yards.

Find all of our Notes on PFF’s Patriots Grades here.

Notes on PFF’s Patriots grades: Week 2 Cardinals

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The grades are out for the Patriots-Cardinals game, and here some numbers that stand out to me.

Top Defensive Player: Chandler Jones (4.7)

Top Offensive Player: Sebastian Vollmer (3.3)

Worst Defensive Player: Jermaine Cunningham (-1.3)

Worst Offensive Player: Logan Mankins (-1.9)

Amazingly the top four players on offense were the offensive lineman. All graded out highly in pass protection, and average in run blocking.

I don’t know how Donald Thomas ended up with the 4th best score. I thought he was the worst player on offense. But apparently that was Logan Mankins.

Gronk had his worst graded regular season game since 2010 in Cleveland (-1.7). He had a -2.0 in the Super Bowl but I don’t count that one since he was on one ankle.

Brandon Spikes was the second highest graded defender (4.6) and had an impressive 7 stops (solo defensive tackle that constitute an offensive failure).

Spikes however was picked on in coverage a bit, allowing 3 catches of the 4 times he was thrown at for 26 yards.

Ninkovich bounced back after an average week in Tennessee with a 1.6, including 2 QB hurries, and 3 stops. He did have 2 missed tackles as well.

Kyle Arrington had a rough day in coverage with a -1.9. He was thrown at 5 times and all were completions for 62 total yards.

Devin McCourty had one of his best days in coverage. He was thrown at 4 times and gave up 0 completions.

A rare non-dominant day for Vince Wilfork, grading out an a -0.6. He still had a sack, 2 QB hurries and 2 stops though.

Patriots were brutal running to the left side, not surprisingly with Calais Campbell sitting over there. -2.4 running behind the tight end on the left, and -3.9 running behind Mankins at LG.

They had their most success running right behind the center, but still only scoring a measly 1.0.

The grader only qualified 8 of 50 plays as having Brady under pressure. Also only had 8 blitzes for the Cardinals.

The middle flat was yet again where the Pats did their most damage in the passing game. Brady was 10-11 for 87 yards and a TD there. To the  outside flats Brady was 8-10 for 49 yards

From 10-20 yards Brady was 5-13 for 54 yards. For 20+ yards he was 2-6 for 61 yards.

Return game was average with McCourty scoring a -0.2 on 2 kick off returns, and Welker and Edelman combining for a 0.8 on 2 punt returns.