Pro Football Focus player grades: Week Four

Rivals has teamed up with Pro Football Focus, the go-to site for player grades and advanced analytics in both college football and the NFL. PFF issues grades for every individual player after each game. Every week, we will pass along those grades, as well as players' season-long scores.

Before we get to the scores from Missouri's 43-29 loss to Georgia, here's an explanation from PFF on how the grades are determined:

On every play, a PFF analyst will grade each player on a scale of -2 to +2 according to what he did on the play.

At one end of the scale you have a catastrophic game-ending interception or pick-six from a quarterback, and at the other a perfect deep bomb into a tight window in a critical game situation, with the middle of that scale being 0-graded, or ‘expected’ plays that are neither positive nor negative.

Each game is also graded by a second PFF analyst independent of the first, and those grades are compared by a third, Senior Analyst, who rules on any differences between the two. These grades are verified by the Pro Coach Network, a group of former and current NFL coaches with over 700 combined years of NFL coaching experience, to get them as accurate as they can be.

From there, the grades are normalized to better account for game situation; this ranges from where a player lined up to the dropback depth of the quarterback or the length of time he had the ball in his hand and everything in between. They are finally converted to a 0-100 scale and appear in our Player Grades Tool.

Season-level grades aren’t simply an average of every game-grade a player compiles over a season, but rather factor in the duration at which a player performed at that level. Achieving a grade of 90.0 in a game once is impressive, doing it (12) times in a row is more impressive.

It is entirely possible that a player will have a season grade higher than any individual single-game grade he achieved, because playing well for an extended period of time is harder to do than for a short period, Similarly, playing badly for a long time is a greater problem than playing badly once, so the grade can also be compounded negatively.

Each week, grades are subject to change while we run through our extensive review process including All-22 tape runs and coaching audit, so you may notice discrepancies among grades published in earlier articles compared with those in the Player Grades tool until grade lock each week.

Below are the scores from Missouri's Week Four loss to Georgia. (Note: Players who played 10 or fewer snaps were not included).

Offense

Takeaways:

While Missouri clearly played its worst offensive game of the season, the fact that only one player earned a grade of 70 points is a bit of a surprise. That Albert Okwuegbunam earned the highest grade of the unit is not. Despite a costly fumble, Okwuegbunam was the only Tiger pass catcher who consistently got open against Georgia's talented secondary.

Damarea Crockett rebounded from a dismal game against Purdue, in which he didn't play during the second half. I'm a bit surprised Crockett, Larry Rountree and Tyler Badie weren't all graded a bit higher. A closer look at the PFF scores shows Rountree received a low grade in the receiving game and Badie was penalized for his pass blocking.

Emanuel Hall entered the game as Missouri's highest graded individual player, and while it's not a shock he tied for the worst grade on the offense, it was clear that his performance impacted the entire offense.

Defense

Takeaways:

I didn't include Christian Holmes in these grades because he only played seven snaps, but he earned a whopping 93.4 score. Considering DeMarkus Acy and Adam Sparks both struggled a bit, each earning grades below 60 points, perhaps Holmes should have seen the field more.

Cam Hilton has yo-yoed between grading out as one of Missouri's best defensive players and one of its worst in each game this season. He earned his 73.4 grade Saturday while playing through a broken thumb. If he has to miss time due to the injury in the future (he said after the game there's a possibility he'll have surgery on the thumb), it will hurt the Tiger defense.

I've typically thought PFF has overrated Terry Beckner Jr. a bit this season, but I'm surprised his grade from Saturday's game wasn't higher. Beckner blew up several short-yardage rushing plays.

Overall

Missouri's offense received an overall grade of 60.4, by far its worst grade of the season. Here's how that grade broke down:

Passing: 59.8

Pass Blocking: 57.1

Receiving: 57.0

Running: 68.9

Run Blocking: 56.7

The only facet of Missouri's offense that PFF deemed above average (an average score being around 64 points) was the rushing game. That's a problem for Missouri, a team that is going to need to put up points to win games this season. The Tigers' pass blocking and receiving, typically strengths of the team this season, earned particularly disappointing grades.

Missouri's defense earned a grade of 66.0, just 0.3 points worse than it scored last week in a win over Purdue. Here's how each component of the defense scored:

Rush Defense: 68.7

Tackling: 79.6

Pressure: 57.9

Coverage: 63.7

The Tigers have struggled to generate a pass rush all season, and Saturday was no different. That puts more pressure on an already shaky secondary. I'm actually surprised Missouri's grade for its coverage was so high. While the secondary didn't make too many mistakes in coverage, the ones it did led to long touchdowns for Georgia.

One bonus note: We don't usually include special teams grades in here, but Missouri earned an overall special teams grade of 44.8 Saturday. That's dismal.