Adjusted Catch Yards are simply receiving yards with a 5-yard bonus for each reception and a 20-yard bonus for each receiving touchdown. In 2014, Antonio Brown led the NFL with 2,603 Adjusted Catch Yards, the 5th highest total in NFL history. That was the result of a whopping 129 receptions for 1,698 receiving yards (both of which led the league) and 13 touchdowns.

Brown was dominant in 2014, and he led the NFL in more advanced systems, too. But today, I wanted to do something relatively simple. How do we compare Brown’s 2014 to say, three Packers greats from years past?

In 1992, Sterling Sharpe had 108 catches for 1,461 yards and 13 touchdowns. Those are pretty great numbers for 1992, although they don’t leap off the page the way Brown’s 2014 stat line does. If we go back farther, Billy Howton in 1956 had 55 receptions for 1,188 yards and 12 touchdowns. Like Brown, that was good enough to lead the NFL in two of the three major categories, and rank 2nd in the third. And 15 years earlier, Don Hutson caught 58 passes for 738 yards and 10 touchdowns. How do we compare that statline to Brown’s?

Here’s what I did.

1) Calculate each player’s Adjusted Catch Yards. For Brown, that’s 2,603. For Sharpe, Howton, and Hutson, it’s 2,261, 1,703, and 1,228, respectively.

2) Next, calculate the Adjusted Catch Yards for every other player in the NFL. Then, determine the baseline in each year, defined as the number of ACY by the Nth ranked player, where N equals the number of teams in the league. For Brown, that means using 1,398 Adjusted Catch Yards, the number produced by the 32nd-ranked player in ACY in 2014. For Sharpe, we use 1,078 ACY, the number gained by the 28th-ranked player in ’92. For Howton, it’s just 797, the number of ACY for the 12th-ranked player (keep in mind that ’56 was a very run-heavy year). And finally, for Huston, we use the 10th-ranked player from 1941, who gained only 413 Adjusted Catch Yards.

3) Next, we subtract the baseline from each player’s number of Adjusted Catch Yards. So Brown is credited with 1,205 ACY over the baseline, Sharpe gets 1,183 ACY over the baseline, Howton is 906 ACY over the baseline, and Hutson is 815 ACY over the baseline.

4) Finally, we must pro-rate for non-16 game seasons. For Brown and Sharpe, we don’t need to do anything, so Brown wins, 1,205 to 1,183. Howton played in a 12-game season, so we multiply his 906 by 16 and divide by 12, giving him 1,208 ACY, narrowly edging Brown. And in 1941, the NFL had an 11-game slate; multiply 815 by 16 and divide by 11, and Hutson is credited with 1,185 ACY.

As you can see, it wasn’t a coincidence I chose those three Packers seasons to compare to Brown. Those four seasons are the 19th-through-22nd best seasons of all time by this metric, and stand out as roughly equally dominant for their eras (both Sharpe and Hutson won the triple crown of receiving in their years).

This is not my preferred method of measuring wide receiver player, but it’s my favorite “simple” one. I put simple in quotes, of course, since there’s a lot of programming power behind generating these numbers. But at a high level, it’s simple: we combine the three main receiving stats into one, we adjust for era because the game has changed so much, and we pro-rate for years where the league didn’t play 16 games. Nothing more, nothing less.

Here are the top 300 seasons of all-time ^[1]I treated non-NFL leagues as separate seasons, but gave them full credit. This certainly overstates some early AFL guys, and well, maybe some other guys, too. But I didn’t want to add a … Continue reading by this metric: ^[2]Note that even going to 300 isn’t enough to bring in three years: 1957, when Raymond Berry ranked 1st in ACY (427th all-time), 1977 for Nat Moore (466th!), and 1979 for Steve Largent (312).

That’s a fun table, and I’m sure there’s a lot we could talk about. But I’m more excited about the career list, which somehow has the top two receivers in NFL history both light years ahead of everyone else and within 12 yards of each other:

• This metric doesn’t adjust for opportunity, so wide receivers in pass-heavy offenses have an advantage. Yes, that means you, Torry Holt, and it’s why Steve Smith and Jimmy Smith rank lower than you might think (which is why they’re underrated, since we tend to place so much emphasis on the raw numbers). For Holt, his career numbers won’t wow you — 17th in receptions, 13th in yards, 30th touchdowns — but that’s because he didn’t stick around for very long and pad his numbers with junk seasons. Holt is the career leader in receiving yards per game among retired players, and Holt ranks 4th in career receptions, 3rd in receiving yards, and tied for 17th in receiving touchdowns by all players through 11 seasons. For Holt, the two knocks on his career would be that he played for very pass-happy teams and that he didn’t play for longer than 11 seasons. He’s a borderline HOF candidate, but I’d vote him in (although not necessarily ahead of others still waiting for enshrinement).

• Steve Largent tends to be underrated my modern fans. It might be because he didn’t have that one, scorched-earth season like so many other greats. But Largent ranks 8th here, and that’s very telling. He led the NFL in ACY in ’78 and ’79, finished 2nd in ’85, 4th in ’81, 6th in ’87, 7th in ’84, 8th in ’80, and 9th in ’83 and ’86. That’s nine years where he was a top-10 wide receiver, and he ranked 15th and 16th in ’77 and ’76, too. He was really good for a really long time.

• This link should be bullet point 1 on Andre Johnson’s HOF case: Johnson was dominant in 2007 but only played in 9 games, and he led the league in receiving yards per game in 13 games in 2010, too. On top of that, he has three 1550+ yard seasons. Johnson doesn’t get the benefit of his per-game dominance here, but he still ranks 9th overall. That’s pretty darn impressive, given his less-than-stellar quarterback history.

• Lynn Swann is down at 165, the only HOF wide receiver not in the top 100. From a statistical perspective, Swann’s regular season body of work is ’75, ’77, and ’78, where he ranked 5th, 3rd, and 5th in ACY. And over that four-year period, Swann led the NFL in receiving touchdowns and ranked 5th in receiving yards. Even more impressive, only Miami and Chicago passed less frequently than Pittsburgh during that stretch. There may be a “Lynn Swann deserves to be in the HOF” article to be written out there — heck, I even started it for you — but today’s analysis is not how one would go about pumping up Swann’s career.

• What if we did try to include an adjustment for “lesser” seasons? For the sake of argument, let’s use a 0.5 multiplier for ’43, ’44, and ’45 due to World War II, a 0.75 multiplier for the AAFC, and 0.5 for the AFL in 1960, 0.6 in ’61, 0.7 in ’62, 0.8 in ’63, and 0.9 in ’64. I don’t necessarily think those are correct, but I was curious how using those weights would change things. Well, Hutson would drop by 17% down to 10,036, which would still keep him comfortably at #2. Lance Alworth would drop by just 3%, although Don Maynard would fall by 12% to about 4300. Jim Benton (1945) and Art Powell (early AFL) would fall significantly, by about 24% and 22%, respectively, while Lionel Taylor (early AFL) would fall 29%, Mac Speedie would drop by 19%, and Charley Hennigan would fall by 27%. In terms of ranks, Hutson and Alworth would stay at 2 and 7, Maynard would fall from 14 to 19, Benton from 19 to 34, Powell from 21 to 31, Taylor from 31 to 66, Speedie from 34 to 55, and Hennigan from 38 to 72. Feel free to interpret as you desire.

As always, thanks for reading. Leave your thoughts in the comments. And check back tomorrow for Part II, where we review these numbers in light of which teams were the most and least pass-happy.