ANALYTICS: Colorado's PFF grades from week one

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In this article, we use the PFF grades to show you who the best performers were for the Buffaloes against colorado State. This is a free article, but for weeks moving forward, articles using PFF analytics will be premium articles.

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Takeaways: To start, my understanding is that anything over 70 is pretty good. 60-69 range is above average. You often don't see grades over 90's unless it was an incredible performance, which is what Laviska Shenault Jr. absolutely had vs CSU.

Here's one heck of a stat -- Shenault had five avoided tackles after a reception. K.D. Nixon was the only other receiver who recorded this statistic for CU with one. Shenault Jr. averaged 19.4 yards after catch per reception. Shenault's receiving grade on the day was 93.0, an astonishing grade. Lastly, my favorite stat for Shenault's performance against CSU was not an advanced stat -- it was his 11 catches on 12 targets. That is insanely good. Below are Shenault's stats vs each Colorado State defender.

Steven Montez completed 22 of 25 passes on 26 drop backs -- pretty impressive numbers. He did most of his damage between the numbers and around the line of scrimmage, completing 13 of 15 passes for 128 yards in the area. On the outside right of the field from 0 to 10 yards downfield. Montez threw two touchdowns (to Bisharat and Winfree) for 16 yards on 3-of-3 passing.

Looking at some rushing analytics, Colorado had its most success running off the left end, going for 68 yards and a touchdown (13.6 yards per attempt).

Takeaways: It's no surprise that Nate Landman was graded very highly. Along with his 91.0 overall defensive grade, he had individual grades of 90.1 run defense, 85.3 tackling, and 83.5 in coverage. He recorded seven "stops," which are tackles that constitute a "loss" for the offense.

While Jacob Callier got the start, he only was in on 23 snaps (compared to Delrick Abrams Jr. at 70, leading the team), but he made an impact in limited opportunities. Callier had one QB hit and two quarterback hurries on 13 pass rush plays.

CSU threw at Delrick Abrams Jr. a lot, and while they did complete seven of 12 passes on him, it only went for 57 yards. Abrams Jr. had the best coverage grade for CU defensive backs at 70.4 and also had three defensive "stops."

The Buffs top five tacklers on the day who played in more than 20 snaps were -- Landman (85.3), Abrams Jr. (82.2), Nick Fisher (82.0), Evan Worthington (81.6), and Davion Taylor (79.2). A couple players who tackled poorly were Trey Udoffia (28.1 grade) and Mustafa Johnson (47.1). Johnson had a solid game overall though with his rush defense grade of 73.8.

OFFENSE

Overall: 78.3

Passing: 75.9

Pass blocking: 89.6

Receiving: 77.0

Run block: 64.8

Run block: 70.2

You have to love the pass blocking grade for the Buffaloes. Here's how the starting OL graded in pass blocking: Kaiser 84.0, Lynott 82.7, Pursell 80.7, Haigler 75.2, and Tonz 74.8. Haigler was also the best run blocking O-linemen with a 70.6 grade. How about this for in-depth: the wide receivers also get run blocking grades. Both Juwann Winfree and Jay MacIntyre were praised postgame for they're downfield blocking, and PFF gave them love too. Winfree had a 89.0 run block grade, and MacIntyre had a 88.9 grade.

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DEFENSE

Overall: 85.6

Run defense: 90.5

Tackling: 90.8

Pass rush: 75.1

Coverage: 74.8

Special teams: 70.7

As impressive as Colorado's offense was against CSU, Pro Football Focus thought the defense was better. Now granted, the fact that CU's offense let up in the second half and played conservatively in the fourth quarter has something to do with that.

It's really good to see the Buffs' run defense and tackling ranked so well. PFF ranked eight CU defenders with a run defense grade of 70+.

The top pass rushers for Colorado that played more than 20 snaps were: Terrance Lang 78.3, Israel Antwine 72.5, Jacob Callier 72.3, Davion Taylor 70.5, and Mustafa Johnson 70.4.

When I first got access to the PFF analytics on Wednesday night, I felt like a 16 year old kid who was just handed a Ferrari. The amount of information I have now is incredible.

So with this article, I wanted to show everyone the analytics we will have at our disposal now at CUSportsNation.com. Over the next few months, we will dig much deeper into the analytics. You will want to stay posted to CUSportsNation.com.

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On every play, a PFF analyst will grade each player on a scale of -2 to +2 according to what he did on the play.

At one end of the scale you have a catastrophic game-ending interception or pick-six from a quarterback, and at the other a perfect deep bomb into a tight window in a critical game situation, with the middle of that scale being 0-graded, or ‘expected’ plays that are neither positive nor negative.

Each game is also graded by a second PFF analyst independent of the first, and those grades are compared by a third, Senior Analyst, who rules on any differences between the two. These grades are verified by the Pro Coach Network, a group of former and current NFL coaches with over 700 combined years of NFL coaching experience, to get them as accurate as they can be.

From there, the grades are normalized to better account for game situation; this ranges from where a player lined up to the dropback depth of the quarterback or the length of time he had the ball in his hand and everything in between. They are finally converted to a 0-100 scale and appear in our Player Grades Tool.

Season-level grades aren’t simply an average of every game-grade a player compiles over a season, but rather factor in the duration at which a player performed at that level. Achieving a grade of 90.0 in a game once is impressive, doing it (12) times in a row is more impressive.

It is entirely possible that a player will have a season grade higher than any individual single-game grade he achieved, because playing well for an extended period of time is harder to do than for a short period, Similarly, playing badly for a long time is a greater problem than playing badly once, so the grade can also be compounded negatively.

Each week, grades are subject to change while we run through our extensive review process including All-22 tape runs and coaching audit, so you may notice discrepancies among grades published in earlier articles compared with those in the Player Grades tool until grade lock each week.