Rank Vikings' Biggest Offseason Needs

Don’t lose

The first thing you need to understand when pulling up a lineman’s PFF pass blocking grade is that it’s telling you how often each lineman gets beaten and how badly they were beaten.

The PFF grading system, which evaluates every play from a minus-2.0 to plus-2.0 scale and then translates it to the 0-100 number you see on stat pages, doesn’t use the plus side when grading pass blocking.

“The big thing is in pass protection when they came up with it was ‘we’re going to focus on not losing more than winning,’” Palazzolo said via Zoom on Friday. “I think our data has actually backed that up 15 years later — that the most important thing for offensive linemen [in pass protection] is to not lose. We focus on the losses.”

An important facet of the grades to understand is that they hold everyone to the same standard of not getting beat. Whether it’s Joe Thomas or Joe Schmo and whether they’re facing Lawrence Taylor or Lawrence of Arabia isn’t part of the equation. The idea is that the job in pass protection is the same for everyone on the line: Keep the QB clean.

“I’ve been in many meetings with coaches and they will say, ‘Well I can’t ask 78 to make that block,’” Palazzolo said. “We don’t see 78… we just say, ‘He tried to make a backside cutoff, he failed or you were one-on-one in pass protection against Khalil Mack and you either won or you lost and how quickly did you lose?’”

That last part — “how quickly did you lose?” — is worth keeping in mind when studying grades. The ways in which the player loses do matter.

“There’s a difference between a quick loss in 1.8 seconds where the quarterback is immediately under pressure versus one that happens a little bit later and you kind of lose the block where you don’t sustain it long enough versus a holding penalty,” Palazzolo said. “So everything is weighted. They have different ranges of bad.”

Here’s some examples of how a result might be graded:

0.0 = Lineman keeps pass rusher from getting past him

Minus-0.5 = Lineman holds onto a block but gets pushed back into the QB

Minus-1.0: Defender gets past the lineman after some engagement

Minus-1.5: Defender blows past the lineman in under two seconds

Minus-2.0: Defender blows past the lineman in under two seconds and lineman commits a holding penalty

The concept of only focusing on the L’s isn’t exactly how every offensive line coach around the NFL would approach evaluation. Teams would have more specific techniques they want executed and they are grading players within the confines of their team, not always in relation to the rest of the league.

“An offensive line coach trying to evaluate whether you did what we asked you to do in the scheme or it’s a plus or minus for a lot of teams, sometimes they have different layers of plus-plus or minus-minus but it’s all in relation to their own team in expectations,” Palazzolo said.

So as we look at guards on the free agent market like New England’s Joe Thuney (73.1 out of 100 grade) and New York’s Kevin Zeitler (68.7 grade), we can get a sense from their 14th and 23rd ranked pass blocking grades that they would get beaten far less often than 2020 Vikings starter Dakota Dozier (36.7 grade), who ranked 60th of 60.

Of course, we can’t end our judgements right there.

Sacks, pressures, context

Breaking news: Blocking for Tom Brady is different than blocking for Russell Wilson.

How do we deal with this problem when using PFF data?

Palazzolo says to focus on the grades more than the pressure numbers because they attempt to take the quarterback out of the equation.

“We will give a downgrade when you lose in two seconds even if there isn’t a pressure,” Palazzolo said. “Tom Brady protected his offensive linemen from getting pressure stats but didn’t protect them from our grade. On the other hand, Russell Wilson sit in the pocket — we see DeShaun Watson do it, we see Aaron Rodgers do it — we see them sit in the pocket forever and we’re not expecting the offensive linemen to hold his block for three or four seconds. If the defensive lineman comes off his block and gets in the quarterback’s face, we don’t charge it to the lineman or downgrade him.”

That means we should assume generally that free agent offensive linemen who are brought to Minnesota would give up more QB pressures than when they played for a quick-throwing QB. We should also expect that they have somewhere in the ballpark of the same performance as their previous location.

“The sack is very much on the quarterback,” Palazzolo said. “Once the lineman misses his block, whether it becomes a sack, a hit, a hurry or nothing is all on the quarterback, receivers, defensive backs, it’s outside of the offensive lineman’s control.”

Pressure numbers tell us how much the individual lineman’s losses hurt the quarterback. In Dozier’s case, he had the fourth most pressures allowed among all linemen in the NFL. Translated: With Cousins holding the ball longer than the average QB, Dozier getting beat more than any other lineman was quite damaging to the Vikings’ passing game. Maybe with Ben Roethlisberger it wouldn’t have been as harmful.

As we attempt to further understand what the grades are telling us, there’s some common sense context and eye test that should be added as best we can.

The common sense part is that a lineman’s quality of competition matters and that athletes generally deal with ups and downs in their performance. For example, if Riley Reiff faced Robert Quinn instead of Khalil Mack when the Vikings played against the Bears, he’s extremely likely to have better grades in those games than if he went against Mack. Any guard who plays in the NFC West is probably getting destroyed twice a year by Aaron Donald. PFF does not factor the pass rusher schedule.

They do have the capability to break down rushers by situation — though that data isn’t publicly available. Palazzolo used Reiff as an example of a lineman whose pass blocking grades might appear better than they are because he thrives in advantageous situations but struggles when pass rushers can pin their ears back.

“When you break down the construction of it, he’s below average in stable stuff that’s a little bit more difficult,” Palazzolo said. “He’s not good at what we call ‘true pass sets’ when you take out play-action, when you take out three-step drops, he’s below average but his pass blocking grade on play-action and three-step drops is above average. He kind of cheats the system a little bit. He’s good at the stuff that’s easy, he’s not good at the stuff that’s difficult.”

The trouble when analyzing an O-line signing is trying to take apart the grade when sometimes players are just inconsistent for reasons we can’t explain. Even in his prime Joe Mauer hit .347 one year and .293 another year. That happens with linemen too.

Single seasons can be small samples, but on the whole Palazzolo said that offensive line grades are among the most predictive because they have so many gradable plays unlike a cornerback or safety who might only actually be involved in a handful of plays per game.

Run blocking and pancakes

With run blocking, the plus side of the scale comes into play.

Palazzolo explains:

The positives: “Run blocking plus-0.5 you’re winning the gap, you’re moving the guy a little bit. Plus-1 you’re really moving a guy, destroying a guy off the ball. The plus-1.5 and plus-2.0 block exist but they exist in high school. We give them out but we don’t give out many. You’ll see a handful per year. It exists but when a Division-I recruit faces a 150-pound defensive tackle in high school and he blocks him out of the stadium.”

The negatives: “Letting a guy cross your face and lose your gap or similar to pass protection you get whooped off the line and the guy gets completely behind you. Holding penalties are generally minus-1.”

Similar to the distribution of pass blocks by situation, we have to pay attention to the home runs and strikeouts in run blocking.

“One of the most interesting things is that the NFL gets attractive to really good blocks,” Palazzolo said. “They get attracted to pancakes and when you crush a guy and they tend to forget negative plays.”

“Teams get fooled by single plays more than they should.”

Palazzolo compares guards to quarterbacks. Jameis Winston has lots of good and lots of bad. Alex Smith doesn’t have wow plays or throw bad picks. Some guards blow people off the ball and then whiff on the next play. Some guards do not lose very often. They might have similar overall grades even if their playing styles are different.

We’re going to need more common sense and eye test to figure out how each player’s style fits with the team.

What does it mean for this year’s free agent class?

Last year in free agency, seven lineman landed average annual values of money than $10 million. Here’s what their 2019 PFF grades looked like:



As you can see, some of the highest paid free agents in last year’s class graded highly but not everyone.

Four linemen who made under $4 million AAV — tackle Kelvin Beachum (67.1), Mike Remmers (64.1), Demar Dotson (70.8) and Greg Van Roten (65.6) — had average or better grades for a much lower price than players like Flowers, Fant and Peat.

At guard and tackle this offseason, you will similarly find great players with high grades like Trent Williams, who was PFF’s No. 1 tackle last season, and Joe Thuney, one of the NFL’s highest rated guard for multiple seasons. Those guys won’t be overlooked by the league.

But there are those who might not get attention but have decent grades like Rick Wagner (78.2), Beachum (69.0), guard Oday Aboushi (66.6) and guard Matt Feiler (65.9). Others like Kevin Zeitler (65.6) or Gabe Jackson (63.7) seem primed to get overpaid.

As always, there will be under-the-radar free agents and overrated free agents. It’s easier to pinpoint them these days.

That may be the best way that PFF grades can be used in the offseason: They can give us an indication of whether a team overpaid or found a diamond in the rough. That’s a heck of a lot more than we used to have.