The San Francisco 49ers performance in Week 7 resulted in numerous negative grades over at Pro Football Focus. It doesn’t take a genius to know the 49ers performed poorly, but the grading does add at least a little bit of context. I don’t view them as the be-all, end-all of analysis, but they are one piece of a huge puzzle.
You will be stunned to learn that Ted Robinson and Tim Ryan are not big fans of what PFF does. The 49ers radio crew was talking about Colin Kaepernick’s performance in the first quarter, when they veered off into a discussion of PFF’s grading.
Ryan: Kaepernick’s numbers don’t look good, 3 of 6, 58 yards. Does have the touchdown, two runs for 10 yards. He’s playing really well.
Robinson: [Comment about the game situation] The lazy approach, and a lot of football fans today go on Pro Football Focus and see how somebody sitting in a room somewhere grades you. And if watch the game, the first quarter was the best we’ve seen Kaepernick play in a long time.
Ryan: And a lot of those guys that do those grades, they’re sitting in a dark room, and they haven’t been out of the dark room, Ted, in about 20 years. Lot of them are old, retired guys grading that tape.
There is plenty of disagreement regarding PFF’s grading. The eye test carries with it a certain amount of subjectivity, so it is clearly open to debate. But I remain amused by people who go to the cliche of people in their mother’s basement. Ryan and Robinson did not say exactly that, but that was clearly the point Ryan in particular was making with his comment. It does not surprise me to hear that, but it still makes me shake my head.
Possibly the most amusing part of this, if you want to call it amusing, is that later during this drive in which Ryan was complaining, Kaepernick threw an interception. I think Kap’s first four drives would have resulted in solid grading, but things went south in a hurry. I don’t believe we heard anything else about PFF grading once the game turned ugly. Oh well.