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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