ANALYTICS: Oregon State's PFF grades from week one

We are excited to announce that the Rivals network has teamed up with Pro Football Focus, the go-to site for player grades and advanced analytics in both college football and the NFL. We will incorporate PFF analytics into stories regularly going forward.

In this article, we use the PFF grades to show you who were the best performers for the Beavers against Ohio State. This is a free article, but for weeks moving forward, articles using PFF analytics will be premium articles.

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Takeaways: I think the biggest surprise here was that Conor Blount was graded so low. In looking at deeper analytics for him, his grades dramatically increased when he wasn't pressured. When Blount had no pressure around him, he graded at a 72.1 overall, but when he was under pressure, he dropped to 33.5. And those stats are going to be true for any quarterback -- they're not going to perform as good under duress as they are with no pressure, that's obvious. But you definitely want to get that under pressure grade to something a little bit more respectable. I'm sure the amount of sacks he had to take didn't help his overall grade as well.

I'm not surprised at all that Artavis Pierce was graded the highest on the offense, considering that 94 of his 168 rushing yards came after contact. That's pretty remarkable.

Trevon Bradford had an exceptional game, catching six of his seven targets going for 104 yards and two touchdowns. He had 89 yards after catch on the afternoon.

Takeaways: Doug Taumoelau did receive the best grade but only played in 23 snaps; however, he had four tackles, and three of those were defensive "stops," which are tackles that constitute a "loss" for the offense. He was tied for first on the team in that category with Shemar Smith. Taumoelau also got a hit on Dwayne Haskins.

I thought it was interesting to see Lamone Williams graded as the best defensive linemen. None of his stats really stand out though. He was the best of a bad group on Saturday.

Hamilcar Rashed just cracked the top ten, but according to PFF, he had a tackling grade of 26.6. That is awful. Safety Jalen Moore had a similar grade, coming in at 29.0. The top five tacklers one the day for the Beavers were Dwayne Williams (83.3), Shawn Wilson (82.2), Taumoelau (80.8), Isaiah Tufaga (80.0), and Andrzej Hughes-Murray (77.0).

OFFENSE

Overall: 52.3

Passing: 51.1

Pass blocking: 22.4

Receiving: 68.1

Running: 59.7

Run block: 44.6

Obviously, the number that jumps out is the horribly low pass blocking number for Oregon State. Blake Brandel is probably Oregon State's best pass blocker, but because of his matchup with Nick Bosa, he graded out extremely low, with a pass block grade of 2.2. He allowed four quarterback pressures and two sacks on 31 pass blocking plays.

The other number that stands out is honestly the 52.3 overall grade. The Beavs scored 31 points on a really good defense. Why did PFF grade them so low? I think you have to consider that three of OSU's touchdowns came on chunk plays, so while those plays were great, the body of work as a whole was pretty poor.

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DEFENSE

Overall: 52.2

Run defense: 58.4

Tackling: 68.7

Pass rush: 57.4

Coverage: 45.2

Special teams: 57.6

Oregon State struggled the most in pass coverage according to PFF. Dwayne Williams had an individual coverage grade of 51.1, and had his biggest struggled when matched up with Ohio State's Terry McLaurin, who caught four passes (on four targets) for 121 yards and two touchdowns. In total, Ohio State threw at Williams nine times, and they completed all nine passes going for 156 yards. It was certainly tough sledding for Williams.

Staying in the secondary, redshirt freshman Kaleb Hayes actually tied with Shawn Wilson for the most defensive snaps played with 73, and Hayes had the best coverage grade at 66.0. Ohio State threw at Hayes only twice, but Hayes didn't tackle nearly as well as Williams or Wilson.

Looking at the front seven, Kee Whetzel had the best pass rushing grade at 69.1. Oregon State only hit the quarterback twice on the day as Whetzel and Taumoelau got to the QB.

When I first got access to the PFF analytics on Wednesday night, I felt like a 16 year old kid who was just handed a Ferrari. The amount of information I have now is incredible.

So with this article, I wanted to show everyone the analytics we will have at our disposal now at BeaversEdge.com. Over the next few months, we will dig much deeper into the analytics. You will want to stay posted to BeaversEdge.com.

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