Falcons: Chris Lindstrom ends season with NFL’s highest PFF grade

If you want to rank players solely off of Pro Football Focus grades then the Atlanta Falcons have the NFL’s best player. Chris Lindstrom ended the season as the highest-graded player on PFF, and it wasn’t particularly close.

There was only one player in the league that ended the season with a grade that came within two points of Lindstrom and that player missed three games while Lindstrom didn’t miss any.

Atlanta Falcons RG Chris Lindstrom ends regular season with highest PFF grade

Pro Football Focus grades might not mean everything but they still paint a pretty clear picture and that picture shows that the Atlanta Falcons had the league’s best player with right guard Chris Lindstrom. He put together a spectacular season that netted him a PFF grade of 95.

To put that 95 grade into perspective, 49ers left tackle—and 2021’s highest-graded player—had the next highest grade with 93.

Related: Falcons have one player land on PFF’s All-Pro team for 2022.

PFF released an article that went over the highest-graded player at every position and here is what they had to say about the Falcons RG:

"Out of absolutely nowhere, Lindstrom is PFF’s top-graded guard for 2022. We had seen improvement from Lindstrom over his first three seasons in the league, with his grade going from 66.6 to 77.1 to 83.7 last season, but no one could have predicted as big of a jump to 95.0.Importantly, this does not look like a flash-in-the-pan season for him. Lindstrom’s grade ranks in aspects of offensive line play that are generally stable year to year are outstanding. He finished above the 96th percentile in pass-blocking grade, true pass-blocking grade, pass-blocking grade without play action, pass-blocking grade on five- and seven-step concepts, run-blocking grade on zone runs and positively graded run plays."

Seeing his grades improve by about ten points a year is stunning, There is no player in the NFL that has had consistent leaps like that over the past four seasons. Now it is time to pay the big bucks to keep him in Atlanta!