Cowboys-Colts quick thoughts

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by omahacolt

A dude on twitter thought I was an idiot because I said a pff ranking wasn’t a stat.

He seriously thought it was the same as say number of yards or catches. Moral of the story, people are stupid.

Have no idea why shrek thinks a pff ranking means something

That’s funny. For me, it’s the lack of transparency that bugs me about PFF, as well as the presentation of their grades in decimalized format (as if it’s the product of some sophisticated mathematical analysis).

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with expressing an opinion about a player’s skills and assigning rankings based upon those opinions. We read those types of analyses all the time and decide whether we agree or disagree based upon the information used to support the opinion and our belief about the author’s knowledge and experience.

But I feel like PFF is pretty deceptive in this way. Their rankings are really no different from any other subjective opinion, but unlike most opinions they don’t let you know who is doing the rankings, or how the rankings are achieved. It’s just a giant black box which spits out a numerical grade (always with that extra decimal to trick you into thinking its more objective than it is). So essentially you have no reliable way of judging the merits of their analysis, other than to simply compare it with what you see yourself. But then why do I need PFF? Why would I ever be convinced by anything PFF says if they don't tell me why they are saying it? It’s just a marketing gimmick.