Syracuse football: a look at the PFF grades from the Ohio game

The numbers liked the offense and not-so-much the defense.

Game one PFF grades are in for the Syracuse Orange following their 38-22 season-opening win over the Ohio Bobcats this past weekend. A debut for a mostly-new roster means there is a lot to unpack from a numbers standpoint.

The main takeaway: Syracuse’s offense shined pretty well across the board, while most of the orange and red grades stemmed from the defense. That’s something which mostly played out while watching the game and likewise does in the advanced numbers.

Here are the complete PFF grades for the Orange this past week as well as some of the general takeaways from the data:

Offense: skill positions

As expected, Syracuse’s top grades mainly came from the offense. Oronde Gadsden’s first game in nearly a year led to him earning the highest grade (90.1) on the entire roster. He ended up cracking PFF’s College Football Team of the Week for Week 1.

Trebor Pena (82.3), Kyle McCord (73.6), Jackson Meeks (72.1) and Zeed Haynes (69.5) all earned top-five spots among the Orange players this week. Again, Syracuse’s passing attack in Week 1 looked smooth pretty much outside of that first drive.

The passing success even extended to good passing grades for LeQuint Allen (73.5) and Will Nixon (72.8). Dan Villari and Umari Hatcher were the only two players with passing grades below 55.

On the rushing side, all the running backs are bunched up in the numbers. Allen finished with a 61.4 run grade, but Nixon (60.1) and Yasin Willis (55.5) weren’t too far behind. As you’ll see in a bit with the offensive line grades, there’s a clear correlation: passing offense was definitely smoother than what Syracuse was getting on the ground.

Among all players in the ACC for Week 1, Gadsden (No. 2) and Pena (No. 7) both cracked the top-10 in receiving.

Here are the grades for Syracuse’s offense:

Offense – pass and run blocking

Da’Metrius Weatherspoon (88.5) was rock solid as a pass blocker, finishing 13 points better than the next-best lineman (Enrique Cruz Jr. at 76.5). Savion Washington’s 68.4 pass blocking grade was the lowest out of all the O-line (and impacted by a dubious holding call).

Blocking for the run was not terrible, but it certainly wasn’t better than decent — at least according to the numbers. The entire o-line ended with run block grades between 59.3 (Cruz) and 66.9 (J’Onre Reed). It’s notable that tight ends Maximilian Mang (80.7) and Villari (70.8) finished with the highest run blocking grades in Week 1.

Weatherspoon also earns the honor of finishing first in PFF for pass blocking out of anyone else in Week 1.

Defense

Here’s where you’ll find the most red on the stat sheet. Just like in the actual game, inconsistent defense allowed Ohio to take an early lead and at least hang around for a bit.

A few things really stand out:

• Marlowe Wax, even in limited playing time, finished with an 81.4 defensive grade — the highest out of anyone on the unit. The early numbers are really showing how much losing him for a decent bit of the season could be.
• Seven players finished with a tackling grade worse than 40: Duce Chestnut (39.2), Justin Barron (31.8), Fadil Diggs (29.9), Derek McDonald (29.4), Braheem Long Jr. (29.2), Denis Jaquez Jr. (25.8) and Marcellus Barnes (21.7). Yikes. With that said, you’d imagine there will be better performances down the line for some of the notable names on this list.
• McDonald’s 29.7 run grade was the worst on the Orange and roughly 15 points lower than the second-worst grade (Chestnut at 44.8).
• Wax, Barnes, Berry Buxton III, Maraad Watson and Clarence Lewis all finished with top-five defense grades. The bottom-five from worst to fifth-worst was Isaiah Hastings, Chase Simmons, Barron, Jaquez Jr. and McDonald.
• Linebacker Anwar Sparrow finished with the second-best tackling grade and eighth-best overall defensive grade versus Ohio.

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Now it’s your turn: what are your takeaways from Syracuse’s PFF grades versus Ohio?