Kirk Cousins had worse PFF grade than Matt Ryan
If there was ever a time to stand by Mike Zimmer's claim that the people at Pro Football Focus don't know the plays and therefore aren't qualified to grade games the way they do, now might be it after PFF gave Matt Ryan a higher grade than Kirk Cousins following Minnesota's historic comeback against the Colts. .
Cousins was 6-of-12 for 43 yards and an interception in the first half against the Colts before morphing into the Hulk and destroying Indy on 28-of-42 passing for 417 yards, four touchdowns and one interception in the second half.
Matt Ryan threw for 117 yards in the first half and just 55 in the second half and overtime. Still, he had a better PFF score.
- Cousins: 460 yards, 4 TD, 2 INT – PFF grade: 57.4
- Ryan: 182 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT – PFF grade: 65.7
Josh Allen, Andy Dalton, Brock Purdy, Deshaun Watson, Mac Jones, Geno Smith and Brett Rypien also had better PFF grades than Cousins did in Week 15.
PFF wasn't alone. ESPN gave Cousins a QBR of 32.9. Ryan's QBR was 31.4.
What to make of the odd scores from respected QB performance metrics?
"Both grading systems wouldn’t forget the plays involved that got the Colts ahead by 33. Ryan made some very good throws early in the game to get up and then barely threw it the rest of the way, while Kirk’s pick-six and some other early plays would impact his overall grade, even if he was nails in the second half," Purple Insider's Matthew Coller explained.
"Same goes for QBR. If you throw a pick-six that appears to be a nail in your coffin, it’s going to penalize you badly for it. I’m surprised it wasn’t higher for Kirk because of the clutch TDs but QBR probably didn’t give out a ton of credit until the end because it wouldn’t be programmed to believe those mattered, it would think they were garbage time stats, which they usually are when down 33."
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Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.