How do you define clutch? Often it comes down to one or two plays made in pivotal moments, but the data that we collect here at PFF can give us a broader picture of how well a player performed over a subset of plays in a given season. That was precisely what I set out to capture last season when I looked at the inaugural PFF NFL Clutch Team, selecting the players who graded the best in the fourth quarter and overtime of one-score games (within eight points).
This is a small sample, with the minimum threshold set to just 75 snaps, so it’s hard to take too much from one season of data.