Offensive lineman rankings...

[MichaelWinicki]

Originally Posted by honyock

if it is impossible, then why do teams bother scouting, or evaluating players for the draft?

I get it that a system like PFF doesn't supply context. That's the job for humans to do. But to throw out their rankings because "you can't do it" overlooks that ranking systems can reveal things over the course of a season that are useful.

I get it, a blown assignment by a fellow lineman (say, Cook) can give someone else (say, Livings) a bad grade on a play. But over the course of full season, the rankings should reveal trends for a player anyway.

And if you only want to use your eyes and your gut, is that any more useful? Especially if your eyes are maybe a little biased towards your pre-existing opinion of a player. Goodness knows, we humans often have a little bias working against us in these kinds of evaluations.

[View Full Quote]So what do your eyeballs tell you about the Cowboys O-linemen (and I mean something beyond "our line sucks!) I look at those PFF rankings for the Cowboys, and they don't look too far off to me. One thing they can't tell is how one players poor play is affected over time by anothers poor play. But relatively speaking, it can speak to that as well. If Cook has been bad (and the rankings reflect that about him), and that should affect the entire interior of the line, then why has Livings graded out significantly better than Bernardeau? Because Smith has been better than Free? Maybe that's part of it. But it sure seems to fit the eyeball test that Livings has been much better than Bernardeau this year...he's been better able to overcome poor center play than Bernardeau has.

A ranking system like PFF isn't MEANT to provide context. That's up to a team to do (or in this case, it gives us fans a chance to play armchair GM). For example, both Smith and Free have struggled this year, Free much moreso. Does that mean we should move Smith back to right tackle, or look for a replacement (my answer is absolutely not). The context is, he's young, talented, should continue to improve, struggling with a move to LT, showed his promise last year. You give him time. But that's not PFF's job to do. It's up to us people to provide the context, and crazy me, I sometimes hope for more nuanced context than "they suck", "it can't be done", "they're garbage".

One thing that will be interesting...say Costa comes back, and he can play several games without getting hurt again (a big IF), and he grades out higher than Cook. Will that affect Bernardeau's ranking? You'd expect it might, but it would shed some light on how much Bernardeau's bad play is because of who surrounds him, or because he's just bad.

If PFF's O-line rankings are useless, then regarding the Cowboys, where do you disagree with them? Cook too high? Smith too low? And I don't buy the argument that no one can say because you can't evaluate every lineman in the league. If a lineman's play improves, you'd expect their ranking to improve and reflect that over time.

Great reply.

Hopefully some folks read it two or three times until they "get it".