Long Time Coming: CFL Partnership with PFF

Cris Collinsworth was at the forefront of analytics and bought Pro Football Focus in 2014.

However, the Emmy Award-winning football analyst says it wasn’t until 2018 that he really started to believe in the numbers. That’s when the Philadelphia Eagles routinely broke conventional thinking and went for it in fourth place en route to winning a Super Bowl title.

“That was the Eagles’ action all year, they went for it when other teams didn’t,” Collinsworth said in a recent interview. “They understood the chance of not only getting that four-and-four, but also what would happen if they kicked the ball back to Tom Brady.

“I still laugh about it a bit today, because now the football purist just says, ‘Of course you go for it there on fourth and one.’ I’m like, “Get out of here. All of you, none of you did. Don’t even pretend you were.” It’s nice for me to see the whole evolution.”

Earlier this month, the CFL announced its partnership with Pro Football Focus. The agreement helps drive analytics usage across the nine Canadian franchises, all of which used PFF last season.

It also provides player analysis tools for media and fans.

Based in Cincinnati, PFF provides data for all 32 NFL teams and 102 American College Football squads. The rating system evaluates all players at every game during a game and translates data points into a grade for each player, then compares them to their peers across the league.

The CFL has begun sharing PFF’s insights with its new weekly top performers. Instead of highlighting three players, this year’s format features the highest ranked players in their respective positions.

“Partnering with Pro Football Focus will help our league better understand the drivers of the game,” said Greg Dick, CFL Chief Football Operations Officer and Head of Gray Cup and Events. “We remove the microfocus on the individual and take a long look to look at the bigger picture.”

The two parties have been working on their cooperation for quite some time.

“It’s probably another four to five years,” said Ryan Smith, PFF’s director of agency services. “We started working with some of the individual CFL teams, made some visits and they used it mainly for NFL scouting once the preseason cuts were made, kind of scouting some players and hopefully getting them on their roster to add.

“Now that’s changed now that we’re breaking down the CFL and can help their weekly game schedule, so it goes beyond just scouting.”

The CFL is currently dealing with glitches in game stats and player profiles that have disappeared from its website, issues Commissioner Randy Ambrosie has asked for patience from media and fans alike. However, the deal with PFF is an indication that the CFL is trying to improve or expand its numbers.

Smith said the rating of CFL players is similar to what PFF does with both the NFL and NCAA. But some nuances of Canadian football — the longer, wider field, 24 players on the field, three downs and punts on the open field — caused some initial problems.

“There have been some technical challenges that we’ve had to navigate through, but I think we’re in a good place at the start of the year with the season now underway,” he said.

Collinsworth said players are very aware of their PFF rating. The 64-year-old knows all too well how a player’s mind works, having spent eight seasons as a receiver with the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals (1981-88).

“We don’t tell you how historically a great player is, we tell you where he stands against the other players in position in the league,” said Collinsworth. “I’ve had those big, huge players walk up to me when I go to watch practice and in a panic I try to remember what their PFF number was to remember if I should run or if he’s going to hug me.

“It’s a powerful thing. Believe me, I personally understand. They also hand out Emmy Awards every year. I get it, I get it.”

PFF’s data and rating system provides professional football personnel with additional information and streamlines the evaluation process.

“We had an NFL team tell us not too long ago that it saved 10,000 man-hours in the draft scouting process using PFF,” Smith said.

That’s a positive for CFL personnel departments, which are significantly smaller than those in the NFL and also operate with less money.

And what PFF does helps Collinsworth immensely as an analyst.

“I honestly don’t know how I would do my job without it,” he said. “Monday afternoon I’m in a meeting to review the 20 pages of notes and film our boys studied the week before (in two teams playing Sunday night).

“Tuesday is all the film on one team, and on Wednesday I’ll do the other team. On Thursday I’ll go into the package on exactly what all that means and I’ll watch more film to back up whatever it is they’ve said. On Friday I’m going to talk to one team, Saturday is the other and then we decide to close the game.”

PFF also helps out while Collinsworth is on the air.

“At halftime, our analysts send me a report of what they’ve seen based on the numbers,” Collinsworth said. “So if I missed something or if they improved something that I was talking about, I’ll come back to that in the second half.

“So it’s a wall-to-wall job, seven days a week. Some of our guys, it’s probably an eight-day-a-week job, but that’s what every week looks like.”