The highest-graded Trojans through Week 4

We’re past Week 4 of the Pac-12 season and though the USC Trojans have played three games, they join the Washington Huskies as the only two remaining undefeated teams in the conference. In fact, Washington also had a game canceled and so each of the top two teams sit with an identical 3-0 record so far as they’re gearing up for a potential undefeated showdown for the Pac-12 Championship.

Now that the games are settled from this past weekend’s worth of action that saw Oregon fall, Stanford reclaim The Axe from Cal and UCLA reach .500 for just the second time in Chip Kelly’s tenure with the Bruins, we thought it was a good time to look at the grades.

Now, a disclaimer first, as these grades come from PFF and should absolutely not stand as the end-all, be-all for how the Trojans have played this season. This is just one analytics company’s ‘opinion’ on the matter and it’s subjective at that. There are a ton of nuances in grading play calls and grading player’s performance overall, but PFF is the most widely used service that does such a thing, so here we can take a look.

Here are the highest-graded players on each side of the ball through three games and where they rank among their Pac-12 peers.

Offense

T Alijah Vera-Tucker — 85.7 overall (1st among tackles in the Pac-12 and 1st among all OL)

G Andrew Vorhees — 73.6 overall (4th among 24 guards in the Pac-12)

RB Vavae Malepeai — 73.6 overall (7th among Pac-12 RBs)

QB Kedon Slovis — 71.1 overall (5th among 14 Pac-12 QBs)

WR Drake London — 67.9 overall (12th among 39 Pac-12 WRs)

Defense

DI Marlon Tuipulotu — 83.9 overall (1st among DI in the Pac-12)

S Talanoa Hufanga — 78.6 overall (2nd among S in the Pac-12)

Edge Drake Jackson — 78.6 overall (3rd among Edges in the Pac-12)

CB Olaijah Griffin — 73.5 overall (6th among CBs in the Pac-12)

Edge Nick Figueroa — 72.4 overall (5th among Edges in the Pac-12)