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Pro Football Focus assigns baffling grade to Caleb Williams in win over Commanders

The grades from Pro Football Focus don't match up at all with what we saw on the field in Week 6.
Pete Martuneac|
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For those who don't know, Pro Football Focus (PFF) is a fantastic tool for football fans everywhere. They gather all kinds of data on every player from every team in every game. With a membership, you can see everything from snap counts to advanced stats and how each player ranks in their position group. Plus, the PFF mock draft simulator is every football fan's best friend during draft season.

PFF also assigns grades to every player, both for individual games as well as for the entire season, including grades for specific parts of a player's role. For instance, offensive linemen get an overall grade which is made up of one grade for pass blocking and another for run blocking. These are also a useful tool when evaluating players, but sometimes the grades just don't seem to line up with the eye test.

Caleb William
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Caleb Williams' Week 6 grade is proof of that. No one will tell you that Williams played his best game ever on Monday night. He had his ups and downs and missed some throws he definitely wants back. But PFF made the shocking decision to give him an abysmal 46.1 grade. For reference, that's below rookie Dillon Gabriel and even Justin Fields, who racked up -10 pass yards for the Jets on Sunday.

No, that's not a typo. When taking his 9 sacks into account, Fields' production in the passing game was actually negative.

This is a huge swing and a miss for PFF and, to be frank, I have no idea how they arrived at that number. PFF grades are supposed to be the gold standard because they take everything into account. Well, did they account for the horrendous officiating against the Bears that wiped out at least two big completions, including a touchdown pass to Rome Odunze? Did they account for the drop by Olamide Zaccheaus that he very well could have taken 97 yards to the house?

Or what about the fact that the Commanders achieved a feeble 13.3% sack rate, which indicates superb sack-avoidance from Caleb Wiliams? Taking too many sacks was by far Williams' biggest problem as a rookie but he's on pace to cut his sack total exactly in half. That's real growth that speaks to Williams' sky-high ceiling.

It seems that even a breakthrough win over the Commanders, an opponent that is classified by many as a Super Bowl contender, is not enough to halt all the nonsense narratives about Williams. Again, I'm not saying he should have graded out as the week's top quarterback. But placing him below quarterbacks like Fields and Gabriel is just insulting.

Bears fans shouldn't fret, however. At the rate this team is going, it will soon be impossible to deny how far they've come from the Matt Eberflus era. The Bears host the New Orleans Saints next week, who are 1-5, next week, followed by a game against the shockingly vulnerable Ravens. After that, they get the struggling Bengals and Giants in back-to-back weeks. If Williams continues to play as he's been playing, he'll enter Week 11 with his name being brought up in MVP conversations, and MVP awards trump PFF grades.

Caleb William
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Pete Martuneac
PETE MARTUNEAC

A former Marine and Purdue Boilermaker, Pete has been covering the Chicago Bears since 2022 as a senior contributor on BearsTalk. He lives with his wife, two kids and loyal dog.

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