Week 10 PFF recap: Darius Slay earns second-best CB grade in NFL

Let’s check out the most notable—both good and bad—performances from the Detroit Lions Week 10 matchup against the Cleveland Browns, as calculated by our friends at Pro Football Focus.

(Note: All PFF grades and rankings are up to date through Sunday prior to the Sunday and Monday night games. Grades are subject to change upon PFF’s weekly re-grading process.)

Matthew Stafford domination

For the third straight week, Stafford looked surgical against his opponent. Though an early interception dropped his overall grade a bit (just 76.8), Stafford put up some incredible numbers, especially against the blitz.

From PFF’s Refocused article:

The Browns chose to blitz Stafford often and he was able to make them pay, going 9-of-12 for 156 yards and two touchdowns

Stafford now has an overall grade of 80.6 on the season, which is good enough for 11th in the league. You may remember that just two weeks ago, Stafford was 20th.

Rough day for Jarrad Davis

I pointed this out in the PODcast and mentioned it on Twitter on Monday, but this was game for the Lions’ first-round pick to forget.

According to PFF, Davis graded out with an overall score of just 28.2—59th among linebackers as of Sunday night. He missed a couple tackles and gave up 75 passing yards while in coverage.

Rookies are always going to have some early struggles, and there’s no reason to panic with Davis yet. But he’s now had a couple really iffy performances as of late.

Darius Slay nearing top-5 status

Darius Slay was oddly targeted 11 times on Sunday and he responded with an impressive game grade of 86.8—the second highest among all NFL cornerback in Week 10 (prior to the SNF and MNF games). Browns quarterbacks had just a 25.6 passer rating when targeting him, and although he allowed six catches, they totaled for just 42 yards.

Elsewhere in the secondary, Tavon Wilson (82.1) and Quandre Diggs (79.0) put up their usual, consistently good grades. However, Glover Quin had a season-low PFF grade (45.9) thanks to two missed tackles in the running game. Still, Quin ranks third overall among safeties with a 90.1 season grade.

Anthony Zettel is the new Ansah

With Ziggy out of the lineup on Sunday, some (see: me) were expecting a big performance from Anthony Zettel. And he delivered:

It wasn’t an outstanding game from Zettle, but his 80.8 grade is a good indicator of how he managed to step up and play at an above-average level while taking a bigger role with the defense. He also played in a career-high 59 snaps against the Browns.

Taylor Decker didn’t fix everything

While I don’t have an individual grade for Taylor Decker’s first performance of 2017, he sadly didn’t magically fix everything on the offensive line. Decker was swapping playing time with Brian Mihalik, while offensive tackle Corey Robinson (fresh of the IR list) took over for the injured T.J. Lang at right guard.

The results weren’t all that great, especially when it came to protecting Stafford. According to PFF, the team had a pass blocking efficiency of just 70.2, which was third worst among teams that had played in Week 10 before “Sunday Night Football.”

There’s still a lot to do, but the jury is still out on Decker and his influence over the rest of the offensive line.