A PFF+ Grade represents a player's performance —on a single play, in a whole game, or over an entire season in a single number.

We grade the performance of every player on every play relative to what that player is expected to do on that play. Good play scores positively, poor play negatively. Think of it as the work scouts do, but in a rigorous and quantifiable way. That data is then converted to a 0-100 scale, so that we can compare player performance over time.

PFF+ Grades are not statistics. PFF+ grades measure how well a player performed their role on each play, independent of the outcome of the play. So consider two QBs. One throws a perfect deep ball into the hands of a receiver who drops it. The other throws a ball straight at a defender, who bats it down. In both cases, the stat sheet will show an incompletion. But those passes aren’t the same! PFF Grades capture information about the play and the players that other statistics may miss.

We could write a dissertation on this, and if you want to know more, please click here.

PFF+ Grades are an important input into our fantasy offerings but they are merely one of several data sets we use.

This is part of our secret sauce, so we can't say too much. However, what we can say is that we take into account PFF+ grades, expected snap counts, strength of schedule, and teammate quality to compute a distribution of possible outcomes, factoring in both upside potential and downside risk to compile both our rankings and our projections.

Our projections are automated — generated by our data modeling. Our rankings have a bit of the human touch, using our best data modeling married with the sharp eyes and best judgement of our award-winning football analysts.

Our data collectors are watching games as they happen and collecting data with each play. This means that some game data is available within our systems within minutes of the play happening. However, other data is only available after the game, once we've seen the All-22 tape. On top of that, we have data quality and data validation steps to ensure what we collected is, indeed, accurate.

This takes a lot of work to get right.

In practice, this means:

• All NFL game data, including grades, is available and validated by noon EST the day after the game.
• FBS College game data teams, as well as CFL and UFL data is available by 8am EST the day after game day. PFF Grading and our All-22 film review may happen after that, though.
• Projections and rankings are always updated on Tuesday, and often several other times during the week.

Think of Premium Stats (also sometimes called Premium Stats v. 2.0) as a database of our stats we make available to you.

This article details all of our Premium Stats and what they mean.

All NFL and NCAA Premium Stats are available with the purchase of a PFF+ Subscription. NFL Player Grades date back all the way to the 2006 season while NCAA Player Grades date back to the 2014 season. Individual weekly game-by-game grades, team grades and sortable grades by position for each season are also included in the PFF+ Monthly and Annual subscriptions.

PFF has grades but is more than just grades. Our data includes a host of stats you can't find anywhere else, for both the NFL and College, including:

You may be or become familiar with other PFF stats like Wins Above Average (WAA), Wins Above Replacement (WAR), and Athleticism scores, which were built exclusively for our NFL and NCAA team partners. Although we are unable to share those metrics via PFF+, we will periodically feature them in our podcasts and premium articles.