Antonio Brown, Kelvin Benjamin, and Where Yards per Reception Goes Wrong Part II

by Chase Stuart on August 22, 2017

Brown continues to dominate the NFL.

Antonio Brown averaged “only” 12.1 yards per reception last year, although his great reception, receiving yards, and receiving touchdown totals earned him a third straight first-team All-Pro selection. If Brown wasn’t so good and just 28 years old, you might look at that average and think Brown was on the decline or at least was becoming less of a big play threat.

But that’s not really true: with 22 receptions (in 15 games) of at least 20+ yards, Brown had the third most big plays of any receiver last year, and 21% of his catches went for at least 20 yards. What really hurt Brown’s average was that he also caught a ton of short passes: he had 57 receptions of 10 or fewer yards. Kelvin Benjamin caught 63 passes for 941 yards last year, a 14.9 yards per reception average. But while that sounds good, Benjamin only caught 10 passes — or 16% of his total — for 20+ yards. How did Benjamin average nearly three more yards per catch than Brown? You probably already figured this one out: just 20 of his receptions (32%) went for 10 or fewer yards. Either Benjamin wasn’t running short routes or he wasn’t catching passes on those routes. If it’s the latter, it’s a bad thing; if it’s the former, well, it’s also a bad thing (relative to Brown, at least) that all he was doing was running long routes and Brown still caught more long balls than him!

The graph below shows the top 100 wide receivers and tight ends in receiving yards last season, sorted by number of 20+ yard receptions. In addition, I have included the percent of their receptions that went for 20+ yards, the number of receptions that went for 10 or fewer yards, and that percent as well.

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Receiver	Tm	Rec	Yd	Yd/Rec	20+	20+ Perc	<10	<10 Perc
T.Y. Hilton	clt	91	1448	15.91	28	30.8%	36	39.6%
Julio Jones	atl	83	1409	16.98	27	32.5%	26	31.3%
Antonio Brown	pit	106	1284	12.11	22	20.8%	57	53.8%
Amari Cooper	rai	83	1153	13.89	21	25.3%	40	48.2%
Odell Beckham Jr.	nyg	101	1367	13.53	20	19.8%	56	55.4%
Jordy Nelson	gnb	97	1257	12.96	19	19.6%	55	56.7%
Tyrell Williams	sdg	69	1059	15.35	19	27.5%	31	44.9%
DeSean Jackson	was	56	1005	17.95	19	33.9%	25	44.6%
Michael Thomas	nor	91	1134	12.46	18	19.8%	47	51.6%
Davante Adams	gnb	75	997	13.29	17	22.7%	41	54.7%
Doug Baldwin	sea	94	1128	12.00	16	17%	63	67%
Jarvis Landry	mia	94	1137	12.10	16	17%	54	57.4%
Rishard Matthews	oti	65	945	14.54	16	24.6%	34	52.3%
Adam Thielen	min	69	967	14.01	16	23.2%	34	49.3%
Marvin Jones	det	55	930	16.91	16	29.1%	23	41.8%
Brandin Cooks	nor	78	1173	15.04	15	19.2%	43	55.1%
Pierre Garcon	was	79	1041	13.18	15	19%	41	51.9%
A.J. Green	cin	66	964	14.61	15	22.7%	32	48.5%
Kenny Britt	ram	68	1002	14.74	15	22.1%	32	47.1%
Mike Evans	tam	96	1321	13.76	15	15.6%	30	31.3%

Showing 1 to 20 of 100 entries

One remarkable player is DeSean Jackson. He caught a ton of short passes/screens, but he still led the NFL in yards per reception because of how many deep passes he caught. The chart below shows the amount of yards he gained on each catch last year: it is low for awhile, before spiking towards the end. He had 10 catches of 30+ yards and four catches of 55+ yards:

One player who has a low yards per reception average that *isn’t* misleading? Larry Fitzgerald. The Cardinals great saw just 7.4% of his passes go for more than 20 yards, and “only” 61.1% of his passes went for fewer than 10 yards. He simply wasn’t producing much in the way of big plays.

What players stand out to you?

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