If you’re not familiar with PFF (Pro Football Focus) it ranks every single play and every single player in each NFL season. While getting this premium information requires a hefty penny, I figured I’d share some information with the Saints fans out there while sparing you the need to pay to see it. Check out how the Saints players scored this past season for 2010 compared to other NFL players:
WR: Lance Moore was the top ranked receiver for the team with a +8.5 rating overall, good for 6th best in the entire league. Only Brandon Lloyd, Andre Johnson, Calvin Johnson, Percy Harvin and Deion Branch ranked higher. Pretty impressive. Marques Colston was the 21st ranked receiver in the league last year with a +5.7 rating.
T: Jon Stinchcomb and Jermon Bushrod were rated 32nd and 73rd respectively in the NFL. Needless to say my perception that they had miserable seasons was confirmed by PFF. Only 5 tackles in the league that qualified based on enough playing time graded worse than Bushrod.
G: Carl Nicks, with a +26.2 rating, ranked as THE highest guard in the entire league. WOW! I guess his Pro Bowl birth was justified. Jahri Evans was the second most penalized guard in the entire league, and it caused him to be ranked just 31st overall with a +0.2 rating. The year before, Jahri Evans was actually the highest rated guared in the league, and Nicks was 4th. Quite a tandem.
C: Jonathan Goodwin was rated as the 14th best center with a +10.1 rating. PFF considers him middle of the road, over slightly above average.
TE: Jeremy Shockey was a lowly 27th overall in the league. I was surprised he was that high. Dave Thomas was way behind at 42nd overall, and Jimmy Graham wasn’t graded enough times to qualify. Graham’s rating in limited reps was actually good enough for 16th overall, though.
QB: Drew Brees was the 5th best graded passer in the league behind Matt Ryan, Peyton Manning, Phillip Rivers, and Aaron Rodgers. MVP Tom Brady only graded out as 10th best.
HB: We all know this was brutal for the Saints with all the injuries. Reggie Bush graded out best at 34th overall.
FB: Despite large praise of how he rebounded from his knee injury, Heath Evans graded very poorly as the 26th rated fullback out of 30 qualifiers. Interestingly, former Saint Mike Karney was even worse at 28th overall.
4-3 DE: Will Smith‘s disappointing season landed him 35th overall, with Alex Brown at 44th.
4-3 OLB: Scott Shanle ranked dead last of 41 graded linebackers, which is quite alarming. He graded the worst of any linebacker against the run and was 2nd worst in coverage. Yikes. Even more surprising, Danny Clark graded out as the 4th best OLB in the entire league behind only Kamerion Wimbley, David Hawthorne and James Anderson.
DT: Anthony Hargrove was 38th, Sedrick Ellis, who I thought had a pretty decent season, graded much worse than I could have ever imagined at 56th overall, and Remi Ayodele wasn’t much better at 50th overall.
ILB: Rough year for Jonathan Vilma I guess. Another grade I was very surprised to see. He rated like Shanle as dead last at his position in the entire league. He was 50th overall.
CB: Jabari Greer graded the best at only 45th overall (he was 9th overall in 2009) but in his defense he was hurt all year. Tracy Porter was 59th.
S: Roman Harper had what I thought, prior to that abysmal showing at Seattle, was a great season. That was confirmed by a grade of 11th overall in the league. Malcolm Jenkins came in at 47th overall, which I found quite low.
K: Thomas Morstead by virtue of kickoffs ranked 18th overall, and Garrett Hartley ranked 24th.
P: Morstead was rated as the 7th best graded punter in 2010. Not bad.
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