Arizona Cardinals preseason PFF grades highlight struggles of depth chart

It is not victory Monday for the Arizona Cardinals, as they dropped to 1-1 in the preseason after their loss to the Denver Broncos on Saturday night.

It was not a pretty game, even with the second team in, sans a series from Jacoby Brissett, and yet as concerns go this is minimal.

I have seen the takes on the interwebs and on this board, and as I highlighted yesterday, the staggering difference in yardage cannot be ignored, but also this is preseason.

For instance, the PFF grades for the top five players in the Cardinals loss to the Denver Broncos were:

1. Jacoby Brissett – 92.1
2. Kyon Barrs – 80.7
3. Mykal Walker – 78.6
4. Elijah Jones – 73.8
5. Benton Whitley – 70

So Brissett was the only offensive player to score a 70 or higher in this game, but if you look at the next four names these four are all on defense. They also all played late into the game, so it would stand that they should have played well.

The other end of the spectrum is the bottom ten players from the game:

1. Akeem Davis-Gaither – 26.3
2. Dadrion Taylor-Demerson – 28.3
3. L.J. Collier – 28.4
4. Will Johnson – 30.7
5. Vi Jones – 34.4
6. Owen Pappoe – 34.7
7. Cody Simon – 35.9
8. McClendon Curtis, OT – 40.3
9. Clayton Tune – 44.6
10. Elijah Higgins – 44.8

The worst players in the game were all defensive players, and those who will either start or have a lot of playing time. Is that concerning? Maybe, but for some they had one or two series total. There was no chance to get into and improve on that grade.

The two players on this list that concern me, or I guess should be concerned are Vi Jones and Clayton Tune. Those players played 32 amd 33 snaps respectively. That is roughly a half game.

Those grades can tell some of the story, but they don’t tell the whole thing, which is why even when they look bad, or good for the top five, there are details that we are missing.

Some of those are what were they being asked to do? In a preseason matchup, they could be asked to do something that is a weakness of theirs to see if they have improved on it. Some are being put into a position to see what they cannot do.

There are those who just may not be NFL players, and that is the reality of the preseason, but for the most part, these grades, while ugly, are not concerning… for now.