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Bills defensive tackle Kyle Williams had an interesting response to being told he was ranked as one of the best players in the NFL: He doubted how anyone would know.

Williams was told by Tim Graham of the Buffalo News that in 2010, Pro Football Focus ranked him as the third-best player in the NFL. Williams responded that he doesn’t buy into such rankings.

“I don’t even know what that means, to be honest with you. How do they know how to grade me if they don’t even known what I’m supposed to be doing?” Williams asked.

In Williams’ view, even if you watch him on every single play of an entire season, you still don’t know how well he was playing unless you also know what the Bills’ defensive play call was. Williams points out that what constitutes a good play in one defense could be a bad play in another defense based on what the defensive tackle is asked to do, and those outside the Bills facility won’t know what the defensive tackle was asked to do on any given play.

“If you don’t know what my assignment is or what the O-line’s trying to do, I mean . . . Good Lord, especially in this defense,” Williams said. “I don’t know how anybody would know how to begin to grade this defense if they didn’t know exactly what our job is on a certain play. We have some interesting jobs in this defense that I’ve never been asked to do in other ones. So to grade that on some kind of scale? I don’t know how they could do that.”

There’s certainly some value in tape scouting even if you don’t know a player’s assignment. After all, that’s what every NFL team does when scouting players on opposing teams. But Williams raises a fair point about the limitations of watching a team from the outside.