PFF owner Cris Collinsworth responds to J.J. Watt criticism of player grades

The fascinating part of the latest criticisms toward Pro Football Focus and its presence on Sunday Night Football broadcasts is that the man behind the data analytics company and its controversial player grades is a longtime NFL announcer himself. Cris Collinsworth purchased PFF in 2014 and was the driving force behind its grades appearing on NBC’s broadcast, where he works.

So while Collinsworth certainly has a vested interest in PFF and its success, he also is a former Pro Bowl receiver as well as a longtime NFL game analyst, giving him perspective across the industry to understand and engage with critics who bristle at the thought of a single number that evaluates the performance of a football player, given how complicated the sport is.

The latest round of barbs toward PFF began with retired two-time Super Bowl champion pass rusher Chris Long, who called for NBC to stop displaying PFF grades alongside players’ names during on-air lineup introductions. Quickly, a chorus of (mostly) former players joined in, including another legendary defensive lineman in J.J. Watt, who recently made the jump to call games for the NFL on CBS this season.

In an appearance on Up & Adams this week, Collinsworth finally had a chance to defend himself and PFF. And he hardly appeared fazed.

“Thanks for the attention, you’re helping our sales,” Collinsworth said. “There’s always a complaint, but we’ve spent literally tens of millions of dollars trying to perfect this system. Every NFL team, every college team, every Canadian Football League team has it … everybody uses it. Every announcer, almost, other than a couple, uses it.”

Collinsworth invited Watt and any other critic to come to the company’s HQ and learn about the process it uses to evaluate players. He said that early on when he bought PFF, coaches frequently called him directly and were “way louder” in their opposition than Watt or Long.

In multiple cases, coaches made offers to put money into PFF as investors or deployed it more fully within their teams after seeing “how the potato chips are made.” So Collinsworth appreciates the open dialogue with people in the industry, and believes it helps make PFF better.

Collinsworth added that he understands why the nature of ranking players is frustrating. It began because PFF did a lot of early work on the NFL Draft, where rankings are core to the process. Still, he knows that it will inevitably make competitive athletes sensitive.

“When people rank announcers and I’m not at the top, I’m mad,” Collinsworth acknowledged. “It’s the same thing with the players, so I get it. I totally understand what’s going on. So I don’t get emotional over it.”

However, Collinsworth stated that PFF has gotten multiple calls from teams and broadcasters hoping to use it since Long and Watt ginned up intrigue this week. And he continues to hear from people around the industry who implore him not to give in too much, as they see PFF as a valuable resource to contrast against what they hear in production meetings or the general consensus in media.

One place where players like Long and Watt may be able to find common ground with Collinsworth is drilling down player grades. Collinsworth said PFF is open to splitting up grades to evaluate, for instance, how a linebacker plays in pass defense versus run defense, alongside an all-in-one metric. He also said PFF is considering splitting up its grades to evaluate a quarterback’s running versus passing alongside the all-in-one grade.

“We have all that data,” Collinsworth said, “it’s just a matter of how much work (is it), and how many more millions of dollars am I willing to spend to break it down?”