Micah Hyde was PFF’s top-graded Bills player on defense in 2019

Micah Hyde was the Buffalo Bills’ top-graded defender in 2019, according to Pro Football Focus.

Tre’Davious White had a fantastic season for the Buffalo Bills defense and was showered with awards and honor, highlighted by his first All-Pro nod.

However, White was only Pro Football Focus’ third-best graded defender on the Bills defense from the 2019 NFL season. The top-graded man was safety Micah Hyde, who earned a 78.4 overall mark. That made Hyde PFF’s 11th best safety in the NFL this season. Included in Hyde’s overall grade is his coverage grade, which clocked in at 80.5, the 10th best in the NFL among qualifying safeties.

In regard to White, his 74.3 overall grade landed him the 19th best cornerback spot among PFF’s grades. In a surprise, sandwiched between those two is defensive end Trent Murphy at a 76.0 overall mark, a career-best for him in PFF’s career grades on him. Murphy only have five sacks in the regular season, but had two in Buffalo’s season finale and Wild Card meeting with the Texans.

Assisting Murphy’s overall grade was ability to defend the run. His run defense grade of 74.9 was the 21st best mark in that category among qualifying players in PFF’s grading system.

Both Hyde and White had their career-best PFF marks in 2017, their first years in Buffalo. That season they earned 87.7 and 89.4 overall grades, respectively.

Interestingly enough, someone actually did out-grade Hyde this season. During his two games played, defensive tackle Harrison Phillips collected an 83.2 overall grade. However, Phillips does not qualify for PFF’s year-end grades because of his limited playing time.

If Phillips kept up that the whole season, he would’ve fell in as PFF’s ninth-best defensive tackle mark.

On Hyde, ironically enough, his highlight moment of 2019 actually might not even have been on defense:

 

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