Joe Berger: Was he really a top-50 player last year?

Joe Berger has landed in the top 50 of Pro Football Focus’ 101 top players list.

Now that we’ve entered the long darkness between the draft and training camp, get ready for an endless succession of best-players lists. We need talkers and lists are how you generate talkers.

The internet loves lists. The internet loves arguing about lists.

Pro Football Focus is one of the best outfits at creating talker-worthy lists, because they are perceived as having a deep, thorough approach that gives their take credibility above those who simply throw together a top 100 based on what the eye-test and/or cursory statistical analysis tells them.

In other words, they do more work than you and me, so their list means something.

Well, it means something if you’re not Norv Turner or Mike Zimmer. But that’s a story for another day.

Here’s one item on PFF’s newly-released list of the top 101 players in the NFL that Viking fans at least will happily accept. Joe Berger comes in at no. 40:

"Joe Berger was one of the stories of the 2015 season—or, at least, would have been, if you could convince the league to care about center play. Thrust into a starting position when Pro-Bowler John Sullivan went down, Berger ended up starting all season and playing well enough to win the inaugural PFF John Hannah Award, given to the best run-blocker in the league."

Should Berger’s inclusion on this list really be a surprise though?

Joe is hardly the first Vikings center to do well with the PFF graders. In 2012, John Sullivan came in at no. 26. The next year Sullivan clocked in at no. 87.

Vikings right guards have also tended to do well at PFF. Though he didn’t make the top 101, Mike Harris got a lot of love last year from the site. Two years ago Brandon Fusco was praised as an underrated performer by PFF.

Maybe we should stop being surprised that the Vikings keep finding good performers at center and right guard.

Whether you think Berger really belongs at no. 40 on a list of the NFL’s best players is mere quibbling, when you boil it right down.

Berger had a solid year last year blocking for Hall of Fame-level running back Adrian Peterson in a scheme set up to put an unusual amount of the load on interior linemen as run blockers.

In other words, since the Vikings run a lot, their blockers have more chances to make good run blocks. So good run blockers will look like great run blockers (provided they don’t hurt their scores with too many bad blocks).

Would Berger be a top-50 performer in a scheme where he was less often called upon to do what he does well? Maybe not.

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Which isn’t to say Berger’s performance should be knocked. If you could really judge these things in a vacuum, I don’t think Joe Berger would have a chance in heck of sniffing the top 50 or even the top 100.

But Berger happens to play in a scheme that gives him a chance to shine. Same went for Sullivan those two years he established his reputation as a top 100 player.

Sometimes it’s about finding the right spot. Berger got his chance and made the most of it. He deserves kudos. He wasn’t one of the 100 best players in the NFL last year, but he was one of the 100-highest-graded players. And when you’re grading interior linemen especially, whether experts want to admit it or not, you’re always grading on somewhat of a curve.