clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Arizona Cardinals Patrick Peterson was left off the Pro Football Focus 101 and had some thoughts on it

PFF tried to explain their position, but the Arizona Cardinals corner was too good to leave off the top 101 players of 2016.

If you buy something from an SB Nation link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

NFL: Arizona Cardinals at Los Angeles Rams Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports

Every year now Pro Football Focus uses their grading to find a way to rank the top 101 players of the season without subject to bias of positional importance.

The thing is with grading “every player on every play” is that it does not usually happen that way.

There are plays that go away from players, when that happens, what happens to the player, how are they graded?

What happens when teams spend entire games avoiding a player?

Patrick Peterson took to Twitter to voice his complaints:

The reasoning given by Sam Monson of PFF is fine, but it doesn’t jive with what others have said or graded either.

That level of responsibility, however, means that if Peterson isn’t 100 percent on his game, it will show up quickly. In 2015, Peterson allowed just 50.0 percent of passes thrown his way to be caught, and quarterbacks recorded a passer rating of only 65.5 when targeting him. This season, those numbers jumped to 60.6 percent and 80.7, respectively. He gave up three touchdown catches this season (Denver’s Aqib Talib gave up none) and allowed more than 500 receiving yards.

One of the things that happens with grading is that it comes from different perspectives.

B/R 1000, the Bleacher Report grading system in place to compete with PFF had Peterson as their fourth best corner in the NFL in 2016.

In their rankings, B/R had Aqib Talib nine, PFF had him one.

Chris Harris was the top corner on B/R, PFF had him two.

Malcolm Butler was three on PFF’s list, B/R had him 19... 19!

Let’s take a look at the rest of the corners (that we know of) ranked ahead of Peterson by PFF, with their B/R 1000 final rankings in parentheses.

Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie (10), Casey Hayward (8), Janoris Jenkins (2), A.J. Bouye (20), Brent Grimes (16), Terrence Newman (53) , Richard Sherman (6), and Marcus Peters (3) were all ranked ahead of Peterson by PFF, and that is if Peterson is the next corner on their list.

Peterson was the 12th best corner, at best, according to PFF.

Yet, B/R had him as the fourth best corner.

That is a pretty big discrepancy, but look at the rest of the list. Bouye, Newman and even Peters have huge shifts.

What do you believe? Who do you believe?

None of it matters in the end, but it is definitely a topic worth discussing.