Raider fan requests (spoiled brat demands) right now!

How Grades are assigned:
bq. Each grade given is between +2 and -2 with 0.5 increments and an average of 0. A positive intervention in the game rates a positive grading and vice versa. Very (very) little draws a +/-2 rating. In fact the distribution of non-zero grades is like this:
+2.0 0.01%
+1.5 0.3%
+1.0 16%
+0.5 37% (unbalanced because of the way WRs and HBs are rated)
-0.5 24%
-1.0 22%
-1.5 0.5%
-2.0 0.01%

The grading takes into account many things and effectively brings “intelligence” to raw statistics. For example a raw stat might tell you a Tackle conceded a sack. However, how long did he protect the QB for before he gave it up? Additionally when did he give it up? If it was within the last two minutes on a potentially game tying drive it may be rather more important than when his team is running out the clock in a 30 point blow out.

The average grade or what we would typically expect of the average player is therefore defined as zero. In reality, the vast majority of grades on each individual play are zero and what we are grading are the exceptions to this. Rating a LT as anything other than zero for a successfully completed backside seal block on a DRE is going to a level of complexity beyond the scope of this site.
The “Rules” of Grading
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Because of the nature of the roles, each position is graded in a slightly different way and the definitions for each run to many pages. Whilst I’m not going to explain exactly how we grade because to some degree that’s our IP (Emphasis on P as opposed to I) and to another it’s just extremely tedious, below are a few of the key principles we use when grading:

1. DON’T GUESS
If you’re not 80% sure what’s gone on then don’t grade the play. The grades should stand up to scrutiny and criticism. It’s far better to say you’re not sure than be wrong. However, this is not an excuse for chickening out on making a judgment. What we definitely DO NOT do is raise or lower the grading because we’re not sure. Giving -0.5 rather than -1 or -1.5 because you can’t be certain what went on is wrong. The correct score is 0.

2. WE ARE NOT SCOUTS
We are not grading style or technique; just result. We aren’t looking for players with potential who have been badly coached or grading on technique. We’ve all heard the terms knee-bender, stiff hips, inconsistent footwork or over-extension etc. but as far as we’re concerned it doesn’t matter whether you know what they mean or not. All we care about is the result; did that linemen make the block he tried to make. This is Professional Football and the talent level is high enough and consistent enough to generally assume that the player at least attempted to do what their assignment was on that play.

3. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO APPORTION BLAME ON EVERY PLAY
On each play there is often a “winner”. If the Defense holds an Offense on third and three to a one yard gain they are usually considered to have “won”. It’s possible that everyone on Offense carried out their assignments properly and the play still went wrong; that’s not their fault. Sometimes the play is badly designed or sometimes the defense just does a great job. Ostensibly this site is looking at player performance, not that of the coaches.
   
bq. 4. GREAT PLAYERS SCREW UP TOO
One of the biggest annoyances to me over the years is commentators making excuses for players; well should we say “some” players. Oh it’s Brett Favre so he couldn’t possibly have overthrown the WR; Greg Jennings must just have run the wrong route etc. We look at each player as just a number rather than on reputation. We treat Walter Jones as Seattle #71 and see what comes out at the end.
   
bq. 5. ZERO (0.0) IS THE AVERAGE GRADE
If a player does something you would normally expect then this scores 0. If a LB makes an unblocked tackle 5 yards down the field or a linemen holds back a rusher for 4+ seconds. This is scored as 0. Grades are given as things which reasonably considered better or worse than average.

Normalization
bq. we could leave it there but this would lead to a number of problems. For example, as an Offensive Lineman can only be negatively graded in pass protection the perfect score in the raw data is zero. However what if a lineman plays half the number of passing plays of another guy and they both score zero? What allows you to understand the second has done the better job? This is where Player Participation comes in; to fully understand how a player has performed we need to know how many plays they’ve participated in and what role they performed.

So when we look at, say, a TE we need to know how many plays they spent out in pass routes, how many times they blocked for the run and how many times they stayed in to block for the pass. To this number we then apply a normalization factor to set the AVERAGE player in that facet of the game to zero. To simplify, if you go to the by position tab and select TE the average grade for run blocking is zero, the average grade for pass blocking is zero and the average grade for pass receiving is zero. The only exception to this is for the QB where every grade is raw and un-normalized. Why you ask? Well the process was going to be significantly more complex than for the other positions and as the QB generally came close to zero without normalization it seemed like the effort vs. reward equation wasn’t too well balanced. I’ll probably live to regret and change that decision.