The Wahoos may have looked better Clemson last week but that was certainly not the case this weekend when NC State rolled 38-21, a loss that snapped UVa’s nine-game home winning streak.

It’s to be expected that when you play as poorly as the Cavaliers did on Saturday, the grades aren’t going to be kind to you and that was certainly the case when looking at the data provided by PFF College.

Below is a grade card showing how the top 10 offensive and defensive players fared in loss to the Wolfpack and also a cumulative grade through the sixth 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: Given the issues UVa has had getting off to slow starts, that’s going to show in the grades. When you fall behind like the Hoos did (and especially when you lose your starting QB), that’s going to impact the grades too. It makes sense that UVa’s entire OL makes it into the top six here, with Nelson leading the way by a good measure. He put up a monster number in pass pro (86.7) across 77 of his 99 snaps. Swoboda also hit 80 followed by Poljan’s 76.7, Glaser’s 74.9, Taulapapa’s 74.8, and Reinkensmeyer’s 70.9. Oluwatimi had the best run blocking grade at 76.1 followed by Glaser (74.6), the only two north of 70. Our standard of 15 snaps takes out all of those who were in for the fake punt and once those guys are removed, the passing grades were dismal. Jana had the best grade at 68.3 followed by Kemp at 64.5, the only two north of 60. And in the run game, Taulapapa had the highest grade at 58.

Takeaways: It was another good game for Nelson, who just edged out Cross for the top grade this week. But, as you can see, those were the only two players to grade out above 70. Nelson’s overall grade was driven by his team-high 79.0 grade in run defense, with Taylor’s 74.5 coming in second and Burney’s 71.9 in third. Those were the only scores north of 70. Nelson also led the way in tackling with an 83.4, followed by Gahm’s 77.4,Grant’s 76.6, Burney’s 75.7, and a 75.1 for Antonio Clary, who saw time with Joey Blount out. Jackson had the top grade in pressure at 76.6. But the fact that his was the highest grade with only Alonso (by a tenth of a point) being the only other player to grade out above 70 was emblematic of UVa’s issues. Finally, Cross had a team-high 73.6 in coverage, the only player north of 70 with Grant at 69.4 and Nelson at 67.3.

The Virginia offense finished Week 6 with a cumulative grade of 69.5, which ranks 49th nationally (down from 74.1 when UVa was 28th last week). The Wahoos are currently eighth in the ACC on offense (down from fifth). Each facet of the unit is currently graded as such:

Running— 74.0 (down from 81.4)

Run blocking—74.0 (down from 71.4)

Pass blocking—73.6 (down from 66.4)

Receiving—61.6 (down from 62.9)

Passing—59.3 (down from 68.9)

The Cavalier defense, meanwhile, finished the NC State game with a cumulative grade of 69.6, which ranks 37th nationally (up from 67.6 and 38th). UVa currently ranks sixth in the conference (up from eighth). Each facet of that unit is currently graded as such:

Run defense—68.6 (down from 70.6)

Pressure— 68.3 (up from 66.4)

Coverage— 65.8 (down from 66.1)

Tackling— 51.2 (up from 44.6)

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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.