Yesterday, I looked at team turnover in the passing game for every team in 2013. You can review the pretty complicated ^[1]While I admit to it being complicated, I think the added value in accuracy is worth the added layer of complexity; frankly, I can’t think of a simple way to calculate turnover that really … Continue reading formula in that post, but the short version is to give each player credit for the lower of two values: his percentage of team receiving yards in Year N and his percentage of team yards in Year N-1. Today, I use that same concept to analyze team passing for every year since the merger.

And the team with the greatest receiving turnover in NFL history (even including pre-1970 teams) is the 1989 Detroit Lions. Take a look at the players who caught passes for Detroit in 1988:

The Lions had a terrible passing game in 1988, ranking last in both yards and yards per attempt. Detroit’s top three receivers were Pete Mandley, Carl Bland, and Jeff Chadwick: the next year, Mandley was in Kansas City, Bland in Green Bay, and Chadwick had one catch with the Lions before spending the rest of the year with Seattle. Running back Garry James, fullback James Jones, and tight end Pat Carter were all gone, too. In addition to Chadwick’s one catch, the only two other “receivers” who caught a pass for the ’89 Lions were Tony Paige (100 yards in ’88, 27 in ’89) and Carl Painter (one yard in ’88, 41 in ’89). This next table shows each Lion who caught a pass in 1989:

After looking at those two tables, you can understand why I’ve identified the ’89 Lions as the team to experience the most turnover in the receiving game of any team in NFL history. Which other teams top the list? The table below shows the 100 teams to see the largest turnover since the merger. And while it may not be intuitive, turnover has tended to be a good thing. The Lions had a Relative ANY/A of -1.97 in 1988 and then -1.14 in 1989; that’s an increase of 0.83 ANY/A, evidence that turnover was a good thing here. Teams like the 2007 Patriots and 1999 Rams experienced a lot of turnover, too. For these 100 teams, all presented below, the average change in Relative ANY/A was +0.35. For each team, the final three columns show their Year N-1 Relative ANY/A, their Year N Relative ANY/A, and the difference. As always, the table is fully sortable and searchable.

What about the teams that had the least turnover? The two-time defending champion Cowboys take the top spot on this list. Michael Irvin, Alvin Harper, Jay Novacek, Emmitt Smith, and Daryl Johnston went from this stat line — 1330-777-445-414-372 — in 1993 to this one — 1241-821-475-341-325 — in 1994. That’s pretty crazy, and deserving of the top spot.

As you’d expect, the teams with the least turnover tended to be good passing teams. On average, the teams with the most turnover had a Relative ANY/A of -0.91 in Year N-1 and -0.56 in Year N; the 100 teams with the least turnover had a RANY/A of +0.83 in Year N-1 and +0.51 in Year N.