Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - PFF's Cam Mellor joins the show to talk through the Pro Football Focus analysis and discuss current Iowa football players

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

We are joined by Pro Football Focus' Cam Mellor on today's show to talk through how he got started with PFF, break down the grading scale they used, discuss a few current Hawkeyes and their grades and more. You can follow Cam on Twitter at PFF_Cam Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I thank God I was born on the good arms of the Midwest, and not on the battlefields of the U.S. It's a time of panic, and it's intercepted! It's picked off right away! Intercepted by Marty Hooker! Pick six! Eight seconds into the game! Buffen sets up deep in the pocket, goes down the field for Smith!

Oh! He's got it! Smith! Touchdown. 85 yards. High on. Touchdown, 10. Taking a shot in the end zone.

It is caught. No offense. Touchdown. That's either one or you have it. Go ahead and three. Yes. Two-point lead for the Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network.

As always, I am your host, Andrew Wade, and I'm excited to be here today on this beautiful Tuesday morning covering the Iowa Hawkeyes in all aspects. Today we have a fantastic guest, though. I'm not going to be talking a ton about some of the sports that just happened. Obviously, Iowa took on Minnesota last night and gave them a blowout, beating them 72-52. The men's basketball team did a pretty good job of getting that first Big Ten conference win against a pretty weak Minnesota team. I saw some stuff saying, you know, this is the tournament team. This is an NCAA tournament bound team. I do agree that I think the Iowa Hawkeyes are an NCAA tournament team.

I think they have the talent here. But Minnesota is not really the best barometer for that. This team is definitely struggling after losing their top two players from last year, one to graduation, one to the NBA. And I would love to cover that in more in-depth today, but we do have a great interview, and I also wasn't able to watch the game last night. I was flying for work, so recorded the game. I'm going to be watching it today and then breaking it down on tomorrow's show of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast.

it today and then breaking it down on tomorrow's show of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. In other news, though, the men and women's basketball team plays Iowa State this week. Huge games for both basketball teams. So definitely some exciting basketball to watch later in this week. We're also going to be covering, you know, Carver Hawkeye Arena. And what is the issue there, right? Why are there no fans showing up? Why are we able to have better home court advantage in Las Vegas than at Carver Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City?

And then also Jordan Bohannon, is he going to redshirt? Put out a good clip last night talking about his decision and whatnot. So we're going to be covering that on some later episodes of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. But like I said, today's episode, really excited to bring you a guy from Pro Football Focus, Cam Meller, a guy who is running sort of that college division of Pro Football Focus. I thought it'd be really helpful to talk to him and have you get an idea for what they're looking for when they're grading plays, when they're grading players, that kind of thing. I know there's been some questions regarding some of the grades that some of the Iowa Hawkeye players have gotten over the course of the football season, and Cam does a fantastic

job of explaining all of that on today's episode. Before we jump into that, though, just to do a quick couple housekeeping items, make sure to like, review, and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at. It helps the podcast get some notoriety, gets other fans listening to this great content. We obviously appreciate it. If you have any concerns, questions, comments, feel free to send those my way.

Love the constructive feedback, what we can do to improve the show for you in future episodes. I'm always open to that as well. And please follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at LockedOnIowa. This is how you're going to figure out the latest news of the LockedOnHawkeyes podcast. Also, we just kind of tweet some funny stuff and send out some funny stuff on all three mediums. So make sure to follow us there if you have any of those social media mediums. So with that being said, let's jump right into it with our interview with Cam Mellor from Pro Football Focus. All right, I'm joined here by a special guest today. We have Cam Mellor

from Pro Football Focus. He goes by the handle of PFF underscore Cam. He is the main guy covering Pro Football Focus's college division. Cam, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. To be honest, I can't believe that the season, the regular season is already over. We're staring down bowl week and bowl championship series is here going on. But yeah, other than that, I mean, I flew by in a blink, but it was, it was a great season overall. Yeah. I can only imagine you're pretty busy during the, the college bowl season then aren't you?

Yeah. To, to say the least 130 teams get covered in the same exact level of detail. And so to say that it's Thursday before I can realize it for any given week and I'm still watching games from the weekend prior, yeah, it goes by pretty quick, I swear. It was like I blinked and we were in September, and then all of a sudden it's in that we're now well into December. Yeah, I think that's one of the things that impresses me most

about Pro Football Focus is the fact that you are covering every single game, every single player. What kind of staff do you have to do that? We have – so every player you know, every player gets a grade on every play of every game. And so we have with that, there's so many different data processes per game. So there is a team of 500 or at least 500 part-time analysts during the season. So for college and for pros. And then there's just about 25 to 30 senior analysts that then go and review that and then assign the grades through the normalization process. So yeah, it's over well over 500 part time during the season,

about 75 7075 80 ish full time all year round. That's crazy. And this is kind of a little bit off topic. But how does that I'm just really curious, how does that work for my data control or quality control perspective with so many part time employees? It is a It's a mess. That's why I think each process has their own manager. And so at that point, they manage the collection process from the scheduling to the hiring of the new people, the training process to get everybody trained up to be able to actually collect the data because it takes about a three-month case interview over the summer to get a data collection job. So even if it's just a 500, one of the part-timers during the season, it's still about three months worth of training

to get ready for that point. That's why the majority of our staff is carryover. And then the majority of our analysts, actually you have to do the data collection first for a full season before you get full-time hired as well. So you have a strong vetting process. So that alleviates some of those issues. But yeah, I mean, a data collection team,

we have a full IT staff that has to house and store and do all of it. We have a full data scientist team as well, that actually does the analytics on the numbers. So I mean, it's a whole process, a whole thing. And it's, I mean, there is a team of staff that is just year round, it never really stops. Because even in the off season, it's get organized, what can we do better for this season? And then by next thing you know, it's draft time, and then it's hiring new people for the next season. That's amazing. I think I always kind of assumed there was a lot more behind the scenes than what obviously any of us realized, but that was even more so than what I expected. So pretty cool stuff. I mean, how did you actually get started in Pro Football Focus? That's a similar exact situation where everybody used to have to start doing our player participation process, which was where every player lined up at the snap and what position.

So whether you're in the slot, left corner back, or if you're in, you know, back in the old day when you were lined up as a fullback, you know, that's everybody started that process. So I started back in 2016 doing that and then doing our base data collection. And I found a little, I found a niche in college. I noticed that our college Twitter account was dorm a little, I found a niche in college. I noticed that our college Twitter account was dormant that summer that I got hired in 2016. And so I asked very nicely the right person in charge and said, Hey, anybody run the social account for college? I'd be happy to do it. And within a few months, they realized that it was a valuable aspect, valuable product. And here we are now in over 70 colleges that utilize our data and

our processes. And I think complete full integration with social teams and the SIDs at all these schools. And so that's kind of where it blossomed for me doing data collection. I worked as an editor as well for us for a year or two. And then I've been doing social media for about three years now here as well. So now it's just all college in 2019 and beyond. So it was you got to start doing the data. And then at that point, once you get noticed and shine through that and what we call grinding the tape, I think is the

expression that everybody likes to throw around. So once you do that, but yeah, that's how I started. Yeah. I mean, it's always a grind, right? You got to start from the bottom and work your way up. And it sounds like that's exactly what you did. And I think I can speak for most of College Bowl Nation that we're very impressed and we love the work that you and your team do. I know I look forward to seeing the grades come out, you know, every single week. The fact that you can get those grades out on a Sunday or a Monday and get those, you know, PFF big 10 week,

their team of the weeks is actually really impressive to me as well. What kind of mad scramble is that to get those, get those grades in after that? Very, you know, after the games on Saturday. It's a, it's a,'s a hustle, to say the least. And that's why we actually have, especially for the Pac-12 games, those random midnight Eastern kicks in Hawaii, we actually have a team of staff. We're worldwide.

One of our senior analysts is actually in Hungary. So he wakes up in the morning, has his coffee, and he's starting with Pac-12 games on his Sunday morning for him out there. And so we have a team of staff basically everywhere. So it's still a grind. It's still pretty difficult. And then with college especially, we usually use our first run data, which is, you know, subject to change upon review. But for the most part this season, we've noticed a lot of them in our training process have been so good that not a lot has changed actually after reviews too.

So we're trending upward too in terms of the speed and then reliability of what they look like on Sundays too. That's exciting, man. And so can you maybe give me a high level overview of the grading scale of my understanding? It's basically like a point scale of zero one and two based on every single play and every single player, but I could be wrong. That's kind of what I read. I just want to get, you know, your feel for at a high level, how do you do the grading at PFF? Yeah, that's, I mean, that's realistically, that's it. So it's a, every player gets a grade on, on every single play. And it is on that scale from negative two to positive two. And then it goes in 0.5 increments based upon the play and then a zero grade. So nothing, no positive, no negative is an expected place. So a quarterback

throwing a screen pass that that is including it. That's a zero grade because every quarterback should be able to hit a screen pass. That receiver, that breaking four or five tackles and running 90 yards after the catch, that's going to get a significantly positive play. And then conversely, if a defender misses a tackle or if a defender makes a stop that, you know, based upon the down and distance the level of tackle the speed in which it happens those get those positive plays and then they they go up in increments and so they change kind of per play per per position to

pass rushers can get you know positives quickly depending on how well or how quickly they beat the tackle or the guard in front of them and then pass blockers get those expected grades as well if they hold their pocket and then you know positives if they pancake somebody in in the guard in front of them. And then pass blockers get those expected grades as well. If they hold their pocket and then, you know, positives if they pancake somebody in, in the run game. So, you know, every position has its own subtle nuances and our grade book and our grade manual is actually about 95 pages thick, and that's only on each position and what the situations can be. So there's a, there's a lot more to it, but yet, I mean,

a high level view is that it's from negative two to positive two in a 0.5 increment and then those all total up at the end of the game so you have either you know a plus five or a minus four and then those get normalized to the common zero to a hundred scale to make them kind of easier to digest because it's much easier to look at a grade and say i know what an 85 overall means not what a plus six means. And so that kind of normalizes based upon every other position player at your position from the entire nation or from the entire league in that week as well. So you could be the highest graded player,

but it's not going to always equal out to be a 99. And so where we kind of differ and change from the general point of view is that a 60 is about average. Anything over 60 is above average. And then you get into different levels, like 85 and higher is elite. 80 to 84.9 is great. And then in the 70s, it's good. And then above average is 65 to 69. So things of that nature in terms of the normalization process, a little bit different. And I like to always explain that. But yeah, I mean, anything over 60 is going to be considered a good grade. Yeah. And I think that's, I think, where people kind of get confused, right? Because not everyone understands the grading scale and

they just see the number, right? They just see the number that's put out there and they wonder how the heck did someone else not get that number? I think a good example is actually pretty recently, if I remember correctly, AJ Epinesa had, I believe, 14 tackles, two and a half sacks, maybe five tackles for a loss, but didn't make the Big Ten Team of the Week. And so in that situation, that'd be a case of where, yeah, he probably did really well on those 17, 18 plays, but maybe on the other plays he was a non-factor or maybe he was out of position on a counter run. Would that be kind of what you're talking about there? Yeah, especially for pass rushers. It's a lot lot easy it's very easy for a lot of pass rushers to

win pass rushes on a regular basis I mean you look at Chase Young you look at Chris Rump from Duke that exact same week too where he won over 50 percent of his pass rushes so he was beating the tackle in front of him and Chase Young if he's kept out of the stat sheet or even in Epinesa's case as well there were times that he made the team of the week without a tackle for loss because he was actually just shattering the tackle in front of him but the scheme against him where the you know a quarterback is dumping off the pass really quickly and epinesa can't record a pressure let alone a sack but he's still winning we give credit for that but yeah it's it's if you know 18 plus plays but if you have a couple of minuses in there you're not going to be better than a guy who, you know, avoids those negative plays, so to speak.

So that's where like the plus minus, the cumulative grade at the end of the, at the end of the game. And then also at the end of the season also adds up and the normalizes. So it, there's, there's some subtle nuances and the, you know, you have to take it into consideration too, when you look at the talent as well, but yeah, one of those, you know, some of those performances will fly under the radar because of those situations where if you get panicked in the run game, that's going to be just as, as bad those, you know, some of those performances will fly under the radar because of those situations where if you get pan kicked in the run game, that's going to

be just as, as bad as, you know, a good tackle for loss is going to be. So it kind of mitigates each other. Coming up on this episode, we're going to be covering a little bit more in depth about the Iowa Hawkeyes and answering a few questions or getting Cam Mellor to answer a few questions about pro football focus. So stay tuned. But before we do that though, treat yourself to the meal you deserve and have your favorite restaurants come to you with DoorDash.

Right now, our listeners can get $5 off their first order or $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code LOCKEDON. Listening on the go? If you can't visit DoorDash right now, you can find this and all of their offers from LockedOn sponsors at LockedOnPodcast.com slash offers. That makes sense.

I think that actually, for the most part, would actually help out a guy like AJ Epinesa, especially early in the season when a lot of people were doing RPOs away from him. They were moving the ball away from him at all times, getting the ball out quickly to avoid having to deal with AJ Epinesa. So, in fact, I think the PFF grading scale actually probably helps Epinesa

more than it typically hurts him. Yeah, and I think that's a great point, too, because we look at that, and if he's double-teamed and triple-teamed like we saw – I mean, the Big Ten had the best pass rushers in the entire country, and that's not just Chase Young. That's across the board. And you just don't hear about them because they knew how to scheme against them so well.

And so you have RPOs either side you have screens the other side you have literally option quarterbacks or running you know wildcat quarterbacks that literally look and spot the best edge defender on the team and then they run the opposite direction that scheme so it helps the grade helps because if they're still doing what they can against the scheme then we you know we grade them positively definitely and uh you mentioned one thing you kind of and you kind of is a very brief tidbit. You said something about competition and kind of the level of talent. Is there any adjustment for competition?

So if Iowa's playing Miami of Ohio, does the grade get graded slightly different than if Iowa was playing Ohio State? It does not. So the grade is independent of the talent in front of them. So you will see a lot more cumulative grades, cumulative positives in those situations. Like when Ohio state played FAU to start the year, when they played Cincinnati and destroyed them, you know,

they had like six people on the big 10 team of the week. That was insane. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, you know, it's, that's where my eye as a senior analyst comes in and I have a couple other guys that helped me with the selection process through there that we look and we say, okay, well, how well did this other guy, how well did the FAU tackle grade last year? Okay, fine. He was top four in the Conference USA.

So that's great for Chase Young to be beating him as well as he did. Things of that nature, you know, it takes the eye because in our opinion, when you're playing that well, you still have to play one-on-one against the guy who is a scholarship athlete. So it's a little different, but it takes the eye. And that's where we take the liberty of kind of sometimes moving away from those grades and those situations where say Ohio state crushes Rutgers, you know,

I'm not going to put everybody that graded so high on that game because that was just, that's relatively unfair if you're grading, you know, very decently against the tougher team as well. That makes sense. So on your big, so on your big 10 team of the weeks, then you might have Ohio state gray out as a top player at every position on the defense, but you're not going to put all those defensive players just because they played Rutgers, correct? Right, and then snap counts also go into play as well

because if you're playing 19 snaps and you had 18 positive plays, and then you got to sit for the rest of the game, things weigh heavier in my opinion, and that's consistent play and the ability to avoid negative plays too. Absolutely, man. So what is the hardest position for you to grade? It's tough. I think each side of the ball has one, and tight end is one on offense,

I think, in my opinion, because those guys have to be tasked with everything. They have to run block. They have to stay in and pass protection every third or fourth play, and then they also have to run routes. So, I mean, you mean you gotta have these guys have hands of stone in the run game and then you also have to ask them then to have pillow hands to catch balls when they're throwing their way so i think tight ends are are really tough and then safeties i think it's i mean it's nothing can really go wrong you're a safety valve in that mind so if you lose if you miss a tackle at safety you know everybody knows about it because typically you're the last person to make the

tackle so it's going for a score so not not much can go right as a safety unless you're a guy kind of like Antoine Winfield for Minnesota against Penn State when he's making those fly around the field plays where he's making those positives but yeah safety and tight end are probably the most difficult yeah Winfield really uh helped Minnesota beat Penn State he was insane in that game and just I mean overall throughout the season he was a fantastic player. So he was fun to watch. Yeah, he was terrific. He made himself some money, I think, too, in the draft as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He should be at least a day two. He should be around a day two prospect, in my opinion. So yeah, awesome. So I just have three other questions for you. The first one, is there any Iowa players that stood out to you this year?

I know, obviously, you don't probably watch every single Iowa game and you know you cover the entire college division but are there any Iowa players that stood out to you? So I mean it's the two obvious ones. It's Werffs, then it's Epineza as well but Geno Stone speaking about you know safeties that kind of stand out. Whenever you can have a stat line kind of like his where you're pulling together multiple defensive stops, multiple plays on the ball, then also multiple pressures. You know, it's not Dermot James type numbers, because it's not really what he's tasked with, in my opinion, obviously. But when you can pull together that,

and you don't miss a whole lot of tackles like Stone did, he kind of stands out to me just because of, I think what we talked about earlier with it's difficult to grade well as a safety unless you're doing those and making those splash plays. So a consistently high graded safety with Stone this year across the conference. Yeah I mean I think I speak for all Iowa football fans when we say Geno Stone is the heart and soul of our defense obviously AJ Penezza is the playmaker but in the sense of the the sacks and whatnot but Geno Stone is the guy who really holds that defense together and you see him flying all over the field

which is pretty amazing to see for an Iowa defense. Yeah, and it definitely reflects in his grade as well. He's the third highest graded player on the defense this season behind Epineza and then – Thank you. Yep. I was getting there. I appreciate it.

You know, when I got to remember the Hawaii player names as much as easy as I have to remember players in my own backyard in Cincinnati, too. It gets a little difficult sometimes. Oh, no, I don't. I don't doubt that at all. It's pretty easy for me as I only follow Iowa as closely as any other thing else. So, yeah, that was easy for me to pull up off the top of my head. I know he was one of the players on the team of the year for Big Ten.

So awesome. Rightfully deserved as well for him with extremely high coverage grades as well. Yeah. And I know we only have a couple of minutes left. I have two questions and actually one of them is about Oja Mudia. How do you, how do you grade when a team plays like Iowa plays predominantly a zone coverage defense. You might see a couple of guys get a couple of catches in front of Oja Mudia, but overall,

it can be a little bit more difficult to grade out a corner and zone versus when he's manning up directly across from a wide receiver how do you do that yeah we have coverage balances we have a review system where we look at the coverage system and then those go to it but basically you know if you're if you're tasked with a with a reception in your zone it's not necessarily going to be a negative if the catch is allowed obviously we have to we assign a negative or a catch to his coverage. If that is the case of it is into his zone, but if it doesn't go for a first down or if he, if he doesn't miss the tackle and doesn't allow a whole lot of yards after the

catch that it gets likely a positive or that that gets to the positive. So the, any sort of small negative for allowing a reception would then be mitigated by the fact that they're, you know, a corner in zone doesn't allow a lot of yak or, you know, a first down or, or even, you know, worse off a touchdown to that coverage. So it kind of, the zone sort of works itself out in that regard to get to about a zero grade

usually in most cases. Makes sense. And then my final question, this actually came from Twitter. Danny Belton for, he is Dane Belton's dad. Dane Belton was the true freshman cash player for Iowa this year. He asked what are considered good and great scores. And we covered that. But the other thing he wanted to ask was our PFF scores consistent with the college and pro level.

So as a 70 in college, the same as a 70 in the pros, there's a little different, a little difference in the pros. So 90 plus at the pro level is elite. 85 to 89 is, is great. And then 80 to 84 is good. And then above average is that 70 mark. So college, we lowered a little bit because of how many players there are across the country that normalize the factors down to a little bit. So if you're getting anywhere above an 85 in college, that's just like a 90 plus in the NFL level. That's awesome. That was, yeah, I would not have thought about that, but that makes a lot of sense.

Well, Cam, we are up at the time. I appreciate you jumping on the call. I think I learned a lot. I'm sure all of our Iowa football fans are going to learn a lot when they listen to this and give them a little bit more insight as to how PFF goes about their business. Any last things you want to say

before we jump off the call? No, I just appreciate you having me. I appreciate the chance to explain it. And as always, to anybody that does listen, has any more questions or follow up, feel free to hit me up. Twitter is the best way to get a hold of me. And yeah, I mean, it's just, I appreciate you letting me come on here and explain as well.

I think it's necessary, but I also think it's good for the game as we go forward into college football embracing analytics. Yeah, the more people know, the more people they can understand and appreciate it and go forward with it. Well, make sure you can follow Cam on PFF underscore Cam. understand and appreciate it and, and go forward with it. Well, make sure you can follow cam on PFF underscore cam cam.

Have a great day. And we'll talk to you later, ma'am. You guys want me to appreciate it. Yep. See you, buddy. All right. And that concludes our episode of the locked on Hawkeyes podcast.

Again, appreciate you all tuning into this day's episode. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with cam. I had a blast talking to him about Pro Football Focus and the Iowa Hawkeyes. I'm obviously a very busy guy, very intelligent guy, and does a lot of great work for Pro Football Focus. And I know sometimes it can be kind of tough to understand their grading scale, right? It's a little bit revolutionary, a little bit different than what we've seen in the past. So sometimes it can be a little bit, like I said, confusing to understand. And so I'm glad

he's able to jump on the show and clarify a few things. If you loved having him on, definitely let me know and we can try to get him back on in the future as well. If you have additional questions that you would love to have answered from Cam, feel free to tweet him at PFF underscore Cam. Otherwise, feel free to tweet at me, send me a message, that kind of thing, and we can hopefully get him back on the show and answer a few more questions as well about Pro Football Focus. Coming up on some later episodes, like I said, we're going to be talking about Jordan Bohannon's redshirt. We're going to be giving a little bit of a breakdown of the Iowa-Minnesota game. Like I said, I wasn't able to give you a great breakdown just because I had to record the game. So I want to make sure I can

give you a real breakdown, not just a box score breakdown. Also going to be giving you a preview of Iowa versus Iowa State, talking a little bit about some of the commitments coming up and also some of the stuff that just happened. Theo Johnson just committed to Penn State, kind of a big loss for Iowa from the sense of it could have been a great tight end prospect to come through Iowa City, but we do have some great tight end prospects in Luke Leitchie and Elijah Yelverton coming in in the class of 2020. So again, not like hurting us, but it would have been awesome to have Theo here, but he did commit to Penn State yesterday. So we'll be covering that as well.

Just lots of great stuff coming up on the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. So I appreciate you all tuning in. And again, make sure to go follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And like, review, and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at. I appreciate you all listening to us. Have a fantastic day, Hawkeye Nation. And go Hawks! We'll see you next time.