ESPN has been teaming up with Football Outsiders and Pro Football Focus in recent years to come up with some more analytical content. While the FO content focuses more on fairly objective metrics, PFF’s uses their grading system. Opinions are mixed on the quality of PFF grading (as opposed to their more objective signature stats), but it provides some interesting discussion points.
On Monday, PFF released their ranking of all 32 NFL teams. They used their 2016 grades, so it is less projection and more where things stood based on performances last season. Naturally, the 49ers returning players graded out fairly poorly, albeit with some exceptions.