The Cavaliers rolled over Abilene Christian as expected last weekend in a 55-15 rout that was every bit the easy W that Vegas expected UVa to have. While Virginia suffered some injuries, namely the loss of OLB Charles Snowden, the margin gave the program the chance to put guys on the field who hadn’t seen a lot of time. Which in turn allows us to get a look at a wide variety of players when breaking down the PFF College data.

Below is a grade card showing how the top 10 offensive and defensive players fared in win over the Wildcats and also a cumulative grade through the 12th week of the season for the offense and defense with comparisons to national ranking. (For more on how Pro Football Focus grades, we post an explanation at the bottom of this story).

Takeaways: Armstrong had one of the best grades in the nation among QBs, trailing only JT Daniels from Georgia who posted a 94.8. That was fueled in large part because he had a 92.6 grade in the passing game as well as a 75.4 in the run game. Equally as impressive is Poljan grading out as highly as he did, thanks in part to his 89.6 in the passing game as well as 81.0 in run blocking. And though that number was really nice, it wasn’t even top two this week as Ra’Shaun Henry (89.1) and Terrell Jana (81.4) led the way. Elsewhere, Kemp’s 77.9 grade was third highest in the passing game followed by Starling’s 72.1 and Thompson’s 71.0. In terms of pass pro, Derek Devine had a team-high 88.8 across nine snaps, edging out Tommy Christ at 87.9 across his seven. In fact, the Wahoos had five other grade out north of 80 including Haskins, Gerrik Vollmer, Jack Keenan, Leech, and Ryan Swoboda.

Takeaways: Given the injury to Snowden, it’s really good to see Gahm (the new starter at that spot) and Brown (the newly added piece to the LB rotation at the top of this list. And speaking of LBs, it’s good to see Perry and Stewart make their first-ever appearances in this feature. Nick Jackson had the team’s best run defense grade at 82.9 followed by Atariwa at 74.8 and Zandier at 74.7. The others at 70 were Su Agunloye, Darrius Bratton, and Cross. Zandier had the highest tackling grade at 82.1 followed closely by Antonio Clary at 80.2. The Cavaliers also had 15 other players grade out at 70 or higher including Bratton, Stewart, Chayce Chalmers, and Gahm in the 78s followed by D’Angelo Amos, Brown, Darren Klein, Jake Dewease, Elijah Gaines, Cross, Agunloye, Nick Grant, Heskin Smith, Atariwa, Jordan Remond, and Carter. Lastly, while Taylor and Perry each graded out north of 80 in pressure with Alonso and Brown north of 75, Gahm also had a team-high 88.1 in coverage across 10 snaps. It was the only grade UVa posted Saturday night that was north of 69 in that category.

The Virginia offense finished Week 12 with a cumulative grade of 73.5, which ranks 54th nationally (up from 72.2 when UVa was 70th last week. The Wahoos are currently eighth in the ACC on offense (up from ninth). Each facet of the unit is currently graded as such:

Running— 82.8 (down from 82.9)

Pass blocking—79.9 (up from 78.8)

Passing—70.5 (up from 64.7)

Run blocking—65.6 (up from 65.0)

Receiving—63.1 (up from 60.5)

The Wahoo defense, meanwhile, finished the Abilene Christian game with a cumulative grade of 73.9, which ranks 46th nationally (up from 72.1 when UVa was 53 last week). UVa currently ranks fourth in the conference (sixth last week). Each facet of that unit is currently graded as such:

Pressure— 78.4 (up from 74.4)

Run defense—77.7 (up from 75.7)

Tackling— 60.2 (up from 57.4)

Coverage— 51.8 (down from 52.3)

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An explanation from PFF on how the grading scale works:

On every play, a PFF analyst will grade each player on a scale of -2 to +2 according to what he did on the play.

At one end of the scale you have a catastrophic game-ending interception or pick-six from a quarterback, and at the other a perfect deep bomb into a tight window in a critical game situation, with the middle of that scale being 0-graded, or ‘expected’ plays that are neither positive nor negative.

Each game is also graded by a second PFF analyst independent of the first, and those grades are compared by a third, Senior Analyst, who rules on any differences between the two. These grades are verified by the Pro Coach Network, a group of former and current NFL coaches with over 700 combined years of NFL coaching experience, to get them as accurate as they can be.

From there, the grades are normalized to better account for game situation; this ranges from where a player lined up to the dropback depth of the quarterback or the length of time he had the ball in his hand and everything in between. They are finally converted to a 0-100 scale and appear in our Player Grades Tool.

Season-level grades aren’t simply an average of every game-grade a player compiles over a season, but rather factor in the duration at which a player performed at that level. Achieving a grade of 90.0 in a game once is impressive, doing it (12) times in a row is more impressive.

It is entirely possible that a player will have a season grade higher than any individual single-game grade he achieved, because playing well for an extended period of time is harder to do than for a short period, Similarly, playing badly for a long time is a greater problem than playing badly once, so the grade can also be compounded negatively.

Each week, grades are subject to change while we run through our extensive review process including All-22 tape runs and coaching audit, so you may notice discrepancies among grades published in earlier articles compared with those in the Player Grades tool until grade lock each week.