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Pro Football Focus (also written as ProFootballFocus, and often referred to by its initials, PFF) is a sports analytics company that focuses on thorough analysis of the
National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ma ...
(NFL) and NCAA Division-I football in the United States. PFF produces 0–100 Player Grades and a range of advanced statistics for teams and players by watching, charting, and grading every player on every play in every game both at the NFL and FBS level.PFF (2022). About PFF. Retrieved on 2022-01-23 from https://www.pff.com/grades. The company publishes their data as a collection of various mostly web-based products. Some basic information is made freely available, while other more advanced products are on a fee or subscription basis.PFF (2022). Tools & Charts. Retrieved on 2022-01-23 from https://www.pff.com/tools.


History

PFF was founded by Neil Hornsby in the United Kingdom. Dissatisfied with some limitations of standard statistics, Hornsby began grading players in 2004. The staff gradually expanded over the next few years, and the site was launched in 2007. The 2006 NFL season was the first season for which PFF has compiled a complete set of data. For the 2011 season, PFF provided customized data to three NFL teams, agents, media and NFL players. In 2014,
sports commentator In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real-time commentary of a game or event, usually during a live broadcast, traditionally delivered in the historical present tense. Radio wa ...
and former NFL player Cris Collinsworth bought a majority interest in the service, which moved its operations to
Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state lin ...
, near where Collinsworth lives in
Fort Thomas, Kentucky Fort Thomas is a home rule-class city in Campbell County, Kentucky, United States, on the southern bank of the Ohio River and the site of an 1890 US Army post. The population was 16,325 at the 2010 census, making it the largest city in Camp ...
. PFF began collecting data for every NCAA Division-I college football game in 2014. As of 2021, PFF provides customized data to all 32 NFL teams, 102 NCAA FBS teams, 7 CFL teams, national/regional media (e.g., ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'', ''
The Athletic ''The Athletic'' is a subscription-based sports website that provides national and local coverage in 47 North American cities as well as the United Kingdom. ''The Athletic'' also covers national stories from top professional and college sports ...
'',
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
) and sports agencies/agents.


Grades

PFF grades every NFL player on every play on a scale of -2 to +2 using half-point increments. The grades are based on context and performance. A four-yard run that gains a first down after two broken tackles will receive a better grade than a four-yard run on third down and 5 yards to go, where the ball carrier does nothing more than expected. A quarterback who makes a good pass that a receiver tips into the arms of a defender will not negatively affect the quarterback's grade on that play, despite the overall negative result for the team. Furthermore, grades are separated by play type. Beyond just an overall grade, an offensive lineman receives one grade for pass-blocking and one for run-blocking. The average grade is meant to be zero, and raw grades are normalized. In watching every game, PFF is also able to record information and create data that is typically unavailable. One example is how frequently individual offensive linemen yield pressure.


Advanced statistics

PFF claims to cover every player on every play of every game at the NFL and major college football levels and creates advanced statistics based on the information gleaned from this.


Criticism

PFF has been criticized by the analytics community regarding the accuracy and veracity of its ratings. In contrast to the purely quantitative ratings released by sources such as
Football Outsiders Football Outsiders (FO) is a website started in July 2003 which focuses on advanced statistical analysis of the NFL. The site is run by a staff of regular writers, who produce a series of weekly columns using both the site's in-house statistics a ...
, TeamRankings, and numberFire, PFF uses qualitative and opinion-based grading as the root of its 0–100 Player Grades – not its advanced statistics. As such, the 0–100 Player Grades are not truly quantitative and could be seen as being prone to bias, poor sample sizing, or other issues.


References

{{Reflist, 1


External links


Official website
American football strategy National Football League websites Fantasy sports Companies based in Cincinnati