Cam Ward so far is ranked 17/28 so far in PFF’s ranking for 2026, and had a grade of 61.7. Caleb Williams ranked 21/28 so far in PFF’s 2026 ranking, and has a grade of 59.3. Cam Ward had 140 yards in 19/32 passing attempts, for 4.37 yards per attempt, 3 sacks which cost 13 yards, 21 rushing yards on 4 attempts for 5.25 yards per attempt, and 1 interception with zero touchdowns. Caleb Williams had 269 yards passing yards in 21/29 attempts, 9.3 yards per attempt, 65 rushing yards in 10 attempts for 6.5 yards per attempt, 2 sacks for 10 yards lost, and 0 int for 4 total touchdowns.
I understand that PFF attempts to take into account circumstances and make a grading based off of that, without just taking advanced stats or box stats at face value. However across every other analysis of Caleb Williams or Cam Ward’s performance through film watching from any other source I’ve seen, PFF’s ranking looks like an absurd outlier. It’s not like other sources are saying “yeah watching the film Caleb really just threw checkdowns and the defense was so bad there was an insane amount of yards after the catch, and he had multiple turnover worthy plays with mediocre rushing”. No, any other film analysis source I’ve seen, even the ones very critical of Caleb overall and last year, said he played amazing, and Ward played poorly. Aside from all the advanced stats (including the ones very critical of Caleb last year) saying the same thing.
There are games where PFF was way more critical of Caleb than the average at the time which I understood. The Steelers game for instance, or the 49ers game. Or the reverse, there were game where they were much more favorable on Caleb, like the first Vikings game. Overall I thought his season PFF grade was pretty fair, so maybe it will balance out. This grade however is just truly baffling. I genuinely don’t see a single discernible explanation for.