Defensive Film Grades From Miami Dolphins' 29-17 Week 16 Victory Over San Francisco 49ers

Funny what some complementary football can do...

The Miami Dolphins entered Week 16 as a team on the brink of no return and left with a big home win against one of their historical foes in San Francisco. The last time these two teams faced, a closely contested game got blown open late as the 49ers came away with a home win. Turnabout is fair play — but how did the Dolphins defense actually play in holding the 49ers to 17 points?

I’ve graded the All-22 coaches’ film. And here’s what I’ve found.

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Methodology

I am implementing a portion of the grading process used by Pro Football Focus this year to quantify player performance.

“The PFF grading system evaluates every player on every play during a football game…did the quarterback make a great throw, but it was dropped? The quarterback contributed to positive production and will receive a positive grade for that effort, even though the receiver let him down, earning a negative grade.

Each player is given a grade of -2 to +2 in 0.5 increments on a given play, with 0 generally being the average or “expected” grade. There are a few exceptions, as each position group has different rules, but those are the basics. The zero grade is essential as most plays feature many players doing their job at a reasonable, or expected, level, so not every player on every play needs to earn a positive or a negative.”

— Pro Football Focus on their grading methodology

This is where my implementation of the PFF approach ends, however. Pro Football Focus converts this scoring into a number on a 0-100 scale while factoring in the weighted value of certain types of reps for certain positions. That isn’t what I intend to produce. I’m much less interested in an “adjusted” consumable score for a player than a true reflection of their net excellent and bad contributions relative to the reps they are assigned throughout a game.

I intend to grade each game for the Dolphins this season with this approach. This will allow us to see the full scope of spectacular and game-changing plays from players, ascertain who are models of consistency, and help further amplify poor player performances by the cumulative sum and per-play average in 2024.

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Defensive Grades Vs. San Francisco

The usual suspects litter the top of the charts. There is a clear divide between the “haves” and “have nots” of the Dolphins’ defensive depth chart and the consistency of grading for many of those talents is illustrated above.

Credit to Emmanuel Ogbah and Kader Kohou for games that scores outperforming their year to date grading — Kohou has come on strong as of late after a strong game against Houston and I don’t think it is a coincidence that Miami’s highest “base personnel” and “big nickel” usages of the season versus a heavy puncher like San Francisco helped yield a good score for Ogbah.

The middle of the field defenders had a tough day against Kittle and Deebo — LB2, both SAF roles, the big nickel (Elijah Campbell) all scored well below expectation. These should continue to be seen as primary needs this offseason.

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All-22 Coaches Film Analysis