You’re going to want to sit down for this one: Antonio Brown and Julio Jones were the two best receivers in the NFL last year.

Houston star DeAndre Hopkins was responsible for 37.8% of all Texans receiving yards last season, the highest rate in the league in 2017 (Hopkins also did this as a rookie in 2014).  But Brown and Jones weren’t too far behind him: Brown had 34.8% of all Steelers receiving yards despite missing nearly three full games.  And Jones had 33.8% of all Falcons receiving yards, the third highest ratio in the NFL.  But Hopkins played on a mediocre Texans passing attack that ranked 20th in ANY/A (more precisely, he spent 40% of his time on a great passing attack led by Deshaun Watson, and 60% of his time on a terrible pass offense with Tom Savage and T.J. Yates under center).  Jones and Brown played on passing offenses that averaged 7.0 ANY/A, ranking 7th and 8th in the NFL in 2017.

One of my favorite things to do at Football Perspective is to look at receiving production in the context of two stats: percentage of team yards and team passing efficiency (highlighted here when looking at Gary Clark’s production on the ’91 Skins). Why do I like looking at this? In some ways, these are counter forces.  Put a great wide receiver on a good passing attack and he might not have a huge share of the offense, but the passing attack should be outstanding.  Put him on a bad passing attack, and the pass efficiency may not be great, but he should have a huge share of the pie.  It is hardly perfect, but it’s fun to look at.

So how do we quantify this? Let’s use Keenan Allen as an example for the table below. He had 30.6% of all Chargers receiving yards last season and Los Angeles averaged an impressive 7.48 ANY/A. He ranked 6th in percentage of Team Receiving Yards, and the Chargers ranked 3rd in ANY/A. Allen was 1.03 standard deviations above average in percentage of team receiving yards – the % of TRY Z-Score — and the Chargers were 1.47 standard deviations above average in ANY/A (the ANY/A Z-Score). If you add those two numbers together, Allen was 2.50 standard deviations above average, the metric by which the table below is sorted. [continue reading…]

Among players with at least 8,000 career receiving yards, there are just seven players who averaged fewer than one receiving touchdown per 200 receiving yards: Jeff Graham was by far the biggest outlier, with just one touchdown catch per 272 receiving yards. Henry Ellard is the second biggest outlier because (1) he’s Ellard, a borderline Hall of Famer and (2) he had just one touchdown per 212 receiving yards. Next up is Julio Jones at one score for every 211 receiving yards, followed by Eric Moulds, Johnnie Morton, another HOF candidate in Andre Johnson, and finally Terry Glenn.

So why does Jones have so few touchdowns as a percentage of his astronomical receiving yardage? To dig in a little deeper, I wanted to compare the length of his touchdowns to that of the other best receivers in today’s game. Who are the top 10 wide receivers of this current era? That’s subjective, of course, but in addition to Jones, a pretty good list would include Antonio Brown, Odell Beckham, DeAndre Hopkins, Mike Evans, A.J. Green, Larry Fitzgerald, Demaryius Thomas, Dez Bryant, and T.Y. Hilton. [continue reading…]

Antonio Brown is one of the best players in the NFL, and is on his way to becoming a Hall of Fame wide receiver. Over his last 88 games, regular and post-season combined, he’s averaging over 100 yards per game. He’s been an AP first-team All-Pro selection for four straight seasons, and has led the NFL in receiving yards since he entered the league in 2010.

He also was the 195th pick in the draft, meaning he’ll likely become the 3rd player in the 195-199th draft slot range to make it to Canton. And just like Tom Brady and Terrell Davis, Brown’s success was unexpected and unique.

Don Hutson may have been the greatest receiver in league history and wasn’t drafted, but there’s a reason for that: Hutson entered the league in ’35, and — not coincidentally — the NFL didn’t institute the draft until the following season. There are only five other undrafted wide receivers to ever average at least 80 receiving yards per game over a three-year period, with a minimum of 30 games played. Charley Hennigan and Lionel Taylor did it in the early days of the AFL. George Sauer pulled off the same trick with the Jets, operating as the perfect possession receiver for Joe Namath (to the extent such a thing existed) and opposite the great Don Maynard. Later, Rod Smith did it with the Broncos, and of course Wes Welker got there with the Patriots.

Only one player drafted later than Brown has averaged 80 receiving yards per game over a three year stretch: Raymond Berry, the dominant possession receiver of his era, who teamed with Johnny Unitas.

Brown plays with Ben Roethlisberger, of course, and that obviously helps. But what makes Brown’s success noteworthy isn’t that he was a low draft pick and has averaged 80+ receiving yards per game, but that he was a low draft pick and averaged over 100+ receiving yards per game! [continue reading…]

On Thursday, I posted a methodology to determine which wide receivers played on the most pass-happy teams, and yesterday, I posted another method of examining the same concept. Today, we will use the same approach to measure which receivers played in the most efficient passing offenses.

Efficiency is defined using Relative ANY/A, which is Team ANY/A minus League Average ANY/A. Let’s use Jerry Rice as an example. You will not be surprised to see that he generally played on very efficient passing offenses.  In 1995, Rice had 1,848 receiving yards, which was 8.1% of his career receiving yardage.  The 1995 49ers had a Relative ANY/A of +1.19 which means 8.1% of Rice’s career RANY/A grade is going to have a weight of +1.19.  Do this calculation for every season of his career, and you see that Rice had a career RANY/A of +1.57.

The table below shows the career RANY/A grades for all receivers with at least 5,000 receiving yards:

None of the Hall of Fame receivers have negative RANY/A grades, although Larry Fitzgerald and Calvin Johnson will probably change that.

Here’s a look at the 23 receivers with 8,000 career receiving yards and played on below-average passing teams:

You will not be surprised to see Joey Galloway on there at -0.45, at least not if you have been paying attention.

Yesterday, I posted a methodology to determine which wide receivers played on the most pass-happy teams. For example, Calvin Johnson played on teams that averaged 39.5 pass attempts per game, when you place more weight on Johnson’s best seasons.  But as Bryan pointed out in the comments yesterday, another good way to look at the numbers is to see how pass-happy each team was relative to league average, something I did three years ago.  By way of comparison, Megatron’s teams passed 115.2% of league average during his career, again weighted for his best seasons.

This method will make most receivers appear to have played on more pass-happy teams, since most receivers have their best years on teams that pass the most (and this method gives more weight to best seasons).  But that should effect all receivers, so I’m not too worried about that.  Here is the same table as yesterday, but with percentage of league average as the key variable rather than pass attempts per game: [continue reading…]

Which receivers played on the most pass-happy teams? It’s a bit tricky to measure that: if a receiver played on run-heavy teams most of his career, but plays a couple of final seasons for teams that throw for 600+ attempts while he is a reserve, that would skew his average. So we need to adjust for a player’s best seasons when measuring how pass-happy his teams were.

Let’s use Calvin Johnson as an example. He played for the Lions in each season of his career, and Detroit has been very pass-happy throughout his career.  In 2015, he had 1,214 receiving yards, which was 10.4% of his career receiving yards.  That year, the Lions threw 632 times, or 39.5 times per game.  So for Johnson’s career pass-happy grade, 10.4% of it will be based off of an average of 39.5 attempts per game.  In 2012, Johnson had 16.9% of his career receiving total, so 16.9% of his pass-happy grade will be based off of the 740 attempts the Lions had that year.  Perform that analysis for every season, and Johnson has an adjusted average of teams throwing 39.5 times per game, as per the table below.

I did this calculation for every receiver in NFL history with at least 5,000 pass attempts. The table below is fully sortable and searchable, but it is initially sorted by career receiving yards. [continue reading…]

You probably know that Jerry Rice gained 1,139 receiving yards at age 39 with the Raiders in 2001, easily the most of any player at age 39. Only two other wide receivers (Charlie Joiner, 440 yards; Joey Galloway, 173 yards) gained any yards at all at age 39.

You probably know that the next year was Rice’s most remarkable feat. Nobody in NFL history other than Rice gained any yards at age 40 or later, but that year, Rice gained 1,211 yards in Oakland in 2002.

You probably also know that Rice didn’t stop there: he gained 869 yards in 2003 at the age of 41.

And you know that Rice also played at age 42, where he gained 429 yards.  By way of reference, Larry Fitzgerald will be 42 in 2025, by which point in time he may already have been in Canton for a year.

So yes, Rice gained more receiving yards at age 39, 40, 41, and 42 than anyone else in NFL history.  But you probably already knew that.  But did you know that three other times Rice gained more yards than anyone else at any age in NFL history?

Rice gained 1,499 yards in 1994 at age 32, the most in NFL history.  In fact, 1499 yards remains the most by by any player not named Rice at age 32 or older.

Rice then gained a whopping 1,848 receiving yards in 1995, at 33 years old, at the time an NFL record and still the most yards by any player older than 27 years of age.

Oh, and at 36, Rice picked up 1,157 receiving yards, the most of any player at that age, too.

So the single-season record holders in receiving yards at age 32, 33, 36, 39, 40, 41, and 42 are all Rice.

Only two other players hold the record for most receiving yards at age X for two different ages (no other player has done it for three).  Can you name them?  While you think about that, the graph below shows the receiving yards leaders by age:

[continue reading…]

There were 66 wide receivers with salary cap hits of at least $2,000,000 in 2017, based on data from Over The Cap. There were 67 wide receivers in 2017 who had at least 700 Adjusted Catch Yards, which is receiving yards with a 20-yard bonus for touchdowns and a 5-yard bonus for catches (for reference, Jeremy Maclin with a 40-440-3 line is the cutoff here at exactly 700 ACY). In other words, I wanted to set a bar for both salary cap hits and production that was pretty low, but not so low that the data would be overpopulated with fringe players.

There were 89 wide receivers who had either cap hits of $2M or 700 ACY in 2017. The correlation coefficient between the two variables was 0.31, indicating a moderately positive correlation but nothing more. The graph below shows those wide receivers with salary cap dollars (in millions) on the Y-Axis, and Adjusted Catch Yards on the X-Axis. The most valuable receivers would be on the bottom right (low cap hit, high production) while the least valuable would be on the upper left (high cap hit, low production). [continue reading…]

Tampa Bay’s Mike Evans is one of the best wide receivers in the NFL. You probably already knew that, but I think his traditional stats tend to underrate the value Evans brings to the Bucs. He ranked just 15th in receiving yards and only 23rd in receptions, but he’s more valuable than those numbers indicate.

The biggest reason? Evans is a first down machine, with 77% of his catches last year turning into first downs. There were 43 players last season who had at least 60 receptions, and the only player with a highest first down rate was TE Rob Gronkowski. But even when Evans isn’t getting a first down, he’s still doing something productive.

If we break down his 71 catches:

• All 15 of his catches on 3rd/4th down went for a first down;

• 26 of his 37 catches on 1st down went for a first down; of the other 11, six went for 8 or more yards, three went for 6 yards, and the other two went for 4 and 5 yards. This means all 37 of his 1st down catches picked up either a first down or at least 40% of the yards needed to go for a first down, which means these were all successful catches.

• On 2nd down, 14 of Evans’ 19 receptions went for first downs; of the other 5, one was a 13-yard gain on 2nd-and-15 and one was a 6-yard gain on 2nd-and-10. That leaves just three catches where Evans failed to pick up at least 60% of the necessary yards to get a first down: a 6-yard catch on a 2nd-and-15, a 4-yard catch on a 2nd-and-7 (arguably a successful play in its own right), and a 3-yard catch on a 2nd-and-10. And that was it.

To recap, all of Evans’ catches on 3rd/4th down went for a first down, and nearly all of his catches on 1st and 2nd down went for first downs, too. Of that remaining group, all of his first down catches gained at least 40% of the distance needed for a first, and all but three of his second down catches gained at least 60% of the ‘to go’ yardage. Just 4% of his catches last year were “unsuccessful”, the lowest rate of any player in the NFL last season.

From ages 21 to 25, Larry Fitzgerald was remarkable. In NFL history, only Randy Moss had more receiving yards over a player’s first five years in his 20s, and only Moss averaged more yards per game (minimum 50 games). Fitzgerald had three seasons with 1400+ yards before turning 26; Moss had two, and nobody else has had more than one.

But then, Fitzgerald’s career declined during his prime years, making him somewhat like the wide receiver version of Ken Anderson. In the post-Kurt Warner/pre-Carson Palmer era, Fitzgerald’s numbers tanked save for one outlier season in 2011 due to remarkable yards after the catch numbers. During the six seasons from ages 26 to 31 — the prime seasons for most wide receivers — Fitzgerald hit the 1,200 yard mark just once, during that 2011 season.

Thought of another way, of Fitzgerald’s six best seasons by receiving yards, five of them came outside of the 26-31 window.  I looked at the 42 players with 10,000 receiving yards who have already played through their age 34 seasons.  I then calculated their average production in each year from age 21 to 34 (whether they played in the NFL or not), to set a baseline average for each season.  Then, I calculated their percentage of receiving yards at age X vs. their average level.  That is in black below.  I also included Fitzgerald’s production relative to his baseline in red and yellow.

As you can see, Fitzgerald was way more productive than even the average elite wide receiver in his early 20s. But at age 26 and 27 he was below-average, and then he was well below average at ages 29, 30, and 31. His production the last three years has been back in line with that of the average elite wide receiver, meaning he’s been right around his career average.

Here’s another way to think of it: Fitzgerald gained 6,176 receiving yards during his “prime years” from ages 26 to 31, and 7,180 in the three years before and after those prime years. From ‘2009 to 2014, Arizona ranked 26th in Net Yards per Attempt; meanwhile, from ’06 to ’08 the Cardinals ranked 6th in NY/A and then 12th over the last three years.

In some ways, this makes him similar to Charlie Joiner, who struggled during his prime years but etched out a Hall of Fame career. Fitzgerald is a better receiver than Joiner was, but if you start with a higher baseline, you can squint and see the career parallels.

The table below shows, for the 42 receivers identified above, their total receiving yards in their six prime seasons from age 26-31, their total receiving yards in the six surrounding seasons (SSS) from ages 23-25 and 32-34, and the difference. Only Joiner has a larger negative (i.e., better outside of his prime years) than Fitzgerald:

Fitzgerald actually gained fewer receiving yards during the six prime seasons than the average receiver on this list, but he had the second-most receiving yards during the six surrounding seasons. Football Perspective favorite Joey Galloway also makes an appearance near the top of the list, which won’t surprise regular readers.

What stands out to you?

Regular readers know that I like measuring wide receivers using some nontraditional methods. One metric I like to track is the comparison of how good a team’s passing offense is and what percentage of the team’s receiving pie went to the top receiver. Do you remember Gary Clark in 1991? That season was remarkable because he had 36% of all Redskins receiving yards and a third of the Washington passing touchdowns while playing for one of the best passing attacks of that era.

This year, Antonio Brown, Adam Thielen, and Julio Jones stand out as the best receivers by these metrics. Brown has picked up a whopping 39.5% of all Steelers receiving yards, the highest ratio of any player in the league. Pittsburgh also ranks 12th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, so Brown gets a lot of credit for being an enormous part of an above-average passing offense.

Thielen has 34.3% of all Vikings receiving yards, the third highest share of a team’s receiving game so far this season. And, as surprising as this may be, Minnesota ranks 5th in ANY/A. So Thielen is playing for a top-5 passing attack while being in the top 5 in percentage of his team’s passing attack. That’s a great season. Jones is in a similar position: he has 34.2% of Falcons receiving yards and Atlanta ranks 8th in ANY/A.

The graph below shows each team’s leader in receiving yards. For most teams, this is a wide receiver; for the Browns, it’s a running back, which says a lot about the Browns; the Titans, Raideres, Giants, and Bills are all led by a tight end. The Y-Axis shows that team’s Relative ANY/A, or ANY/A above/below average. The X-Axis shows the percentage of team receiving yards by that player. You want to be up and to the right on this graph, like Brown, Jones, and Thielen. [continue reading…]

The 2008 Giants were very experienced; the 2009 Giants were not.

In ’08, New York had Amani Toomer and Plaxico Burress as the team’s starting receivers; Toomer retired after the year, while Burress shot himself in a nightclub late in the ’08 season and missed all of the ’09 and ’10 seasons.

The top 7 receivers on the ’09 Giants were the other Steve Smith (24 years old in ’09), Mario Manningham (23), Hakeem Nicks (21), Kevin Boss (25), Ahmad Bradshaw (23), Domenik Hixon (25), and Brandon Jacobs (27). Entering the 2009 season, Smith had 637 career receiving yards, Manningham had 26, Nicks had 0, Boss had 502, Bradshaw had 54, Hixon had 601, and Jacobs had 359.  Derek Hagan, who finished 8th on the ’09 Giants with 101 receiving yards, was the most accomplished receiver entering the year by virtue of his 645 career receiving yards entering 2009.

On a weighted average, that means the 2009 Giants receiving group entered the year with just 318 career receiving yards (by reference, the 2008 Giants were at 2,608). What do I mean by weighted average? Well, Smith had 28.7% of the 2009 Giants receiving yards, and he had 637 career receiving yards prior to 2009; therefore, his 637 receives 28.7% of the team weight. On the other hand, Manningham and Nicks had, together, 38% of the Giants receiving yards in 2009, and they had, together, just 26 career receiving yards entering 2009. The table below shows the full calculation, with the result equaling a weighted average of 318 career receiving yards. [continue reading…]

I know what you’re thinking: Chase, you’re at it again with the clickbait titles. Jeff Graham had a good but otherwise unremarkable 11-year career. Drafted by the Steelers in the 2nd round of the 1991 Draft, he barely played as a rookie on a team with veteran wide receivers Louis Lipps and Dwight Stone. So Graham’s career really spanned the decade from 1992 to 2001, and during that time, he “only” ranked 10th in receiving yards in the NFL despite ranking 6th in games played by receivers during that time.

But if his career was unremarkable, as noted yesterday, his season-by-season progression was pretty remarkable.

In 1992, the Steelers offense was centered around Barry Foster, who rushed for 1,690 yards. Neil O’Donnell was the quarterback, and a second-year Graham broke out with 711 yards and 49 catches. Both numbers led the Steelers team, as Graham beat out Stone and Ernie Mills to become O’Donnell’s top target.

In 1993, Graham regressed; even though Foster was injured and O’Donnell passed more frequently, Graham was limited to just 38 receptions for 579 yards. Tight end Eric Green had a monster year, catching 63-942-5, while Stone basically matched Graham’s numbers.

In retrospect, that’s hardly a bad start to a career: Graham rode the bench as a rookie, was the team’s top receiver in his second year on a run-heavy offense, and then came back to earth a bit in year three.  But Pittsburgh used its first round pick on Charles Johnson in the 1994 Draft, so the Steelers traded Graham to the Bears for a 1995 5th round pick a few days after the ’94 Draft. ^[1]With Yancey Thigpen, Johnson, Mills, and Andre Hastings, it’s not as though the Steelers were thin at wide receiver. And that’s when Graham’s career really took off.

Chicago, of course, was a defensive-focused team with Steve Walsh and Erik Kramer at quarterback, and Lewis Tillman and Raymont Harris at running back. But the Bears had drafted Curtis Conway 7th overall in 1993, and together with Graham, the duo excelled over the next two years.

In 1994, Graham led Chicago with 68 catches, 944 yards, and 4 receiving touchdowns, with Conway producing a 39-546-2 statline.

The 1995 season was the year where the passing attacks in the NFC in general — and the NFC Central in particular — exploded. In Green Bay, Robert Brooks had 1,497 yards and Brett Favre was the MVP. In Detroit, Herman Moore had 1,686 yards and 14 touchdowns, Brett Perriman had 1,488 yards and 9 touchdowns, and Scott Mitchell had 4,338 yards and 32 TDs. In Minnesota, Warren Moon had 4228/33, Cris Carter had 122 catches for 1,371 yards and 17 scores, while Jake Reed had 72-1167-9.  And in Chicago? Erik Kramer threw for 3,838 yards and 29 touchdowns, with Graham catching 82 passes for 1,301 yards and Conway putting up a 62-1037-12 stat line.  Graham set the Chicago single-season record for receiving yards, a mark that still ranks 4th in Bears history today.

So after 5 seasons in the NFL, Graham’s career looked like this:

• Sat on bench as rookie
• Led team in receiving yards
• Setback season
• Led new team in receiving yards
• Led new team in receiving yards

An unrestricted free agent after the season, Graham chose to sign with the New York Jets. By doing so, he was reuniting with Ron Erhardt and Neil O’Donnell, his offensive coordinator and quarterback from his days with the Steelers. All three joined the Jets in ’96, with O’Donnell and Graham signing large contracts.

But a funny thing happened on the way to New York. The Jets not only fell apart, but they fell apart everywhere but wide receiver. Two years later, New York would be in the AFC Championship Game with the only pair of teammates to catch 75 passes that year: Keyshawn Johnson and Wayne Chrebet. Back in ’96, Chrebet was a 23-year-old second-year player, while Johnson was a rookie. Still, the duo managed to outshine Graham in both ’96 and then ’97. ^[2]Despite being a terrible 1-15 team, the Jets had four players who would finish their careers with 7,000 receiving yards: Johnson, Chrebet, Graham, and a 32-year-old Webster Slaughter. A fifth player, … Continue reading The Jets traded Graham to the Eagles in 1998 for a 6th round pick.

Unfortunately for Graham, he was joining what would be the worst offense in football: Philadelphia finished last in points, yards, passing yards, passing touchdowns, and net yards per pass attempt in 1998, a remarkable feat possible only thanks to the trio of Bobby Hoying, Koy Detmer, and a 32-year-old Rodney Peete. In 1997, Irving Fryar (at the age of 35) had 1,316 yards for the Eagles with Detmer/Hoying/Pette again splitting duties, but Philadelphia lacked a true number two receiver. In ’98, Graham actually edged out Fryar with 600 receiving yards to Fryar’s 556.

After the season, Graham chose to sign a free agent contract with the Chargers. A few months later, Erik Kramer also joined San Diego, reuniting the duo for one last season. Playing with Kramer and Jim Harbaugh, a 30-year-old Graham beat out 25-year-old TE Freddie Jones and 25-year-old wide receiver Mikhael Ricks to lead the Chargers in receptions, yards, and touchdowns, with a 57-968-2 stat line.

In 2000, Curtis Conway was fed up with the Bears, and re-connected with Graham in San Diego. Together with Freddie Jones, San Diego should have had a pretty good passing game. Instead? Graham endured the second 1-15 season of his career, thanks to Ryan Leaf and a combination of Harbaugh and Moses Moreno. Still, Graham beat out both Jones and Conway to lead the team in receiving yards with 907.

The 2001 Chargers would be Graham’s final season, and boy did he play on a talent-rich team…. just at the wrong time. Those Chargers had Graham, Conway, and Jones, of course, and were quarterbacked by a 39-year-old Doug Flutie. The backup quarterback was Drew Brees. The starting running back was LaDainian Tomlinson. Tim Dwight was the slot receiver. In their primes, Brees or Flutie could combine with LT, Graham/Conway/Dwight, and Jones to form a hell of an offense. Instead, San Diego went 5-11, and Grham finished second on the team in receiving yards to Conway.

Here is the breakdown for Graham’s 11 seasons in the NFL:

• Sat on bench as rookie
• Led Steelers in receiving yards (beating Dwight Stone and Ernie Mills)
• Finished behind Eric Green and Dwight Stone
• Led Bears in receiving yards (beating Curtis Conway)
• Led Bears in receiving yards (beating Curtis Conway) and set franchise record
• Finished behind Keyshawn and Chrebet
• Finished behind Keyshawn and Chrebet
• Led Eagles in receiving yards (beating Irving Fryar)
• Led Chargers in receiving yards (beating Freddie Jones)
• Led Chargers in receiving yards (beating Curtis Conway and Freddie Jones)
• Finished 2nd on Chargers in receiving yards (behind Curtis Conway)

In the 9-year middle of his career, Graham led four teams in receiving yards a total of six times.   In 2002, he signed with the Falcons, but was released in July.  He did not have a remarkable career, and didn’t put up great receiving numbers, but he was usually the best player on a variety of different teams. That means he either was better than we remember, played with bad quarterbacks to depress his stats, or was “lucky” to play with bad receivers to always be his team’s top weapon.

What do you think?

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.
[continue reading…]

We know that Amari Cooper is a better receiver than Kenny Stills, but who is the better big play threat? Or, more specifically, who was the better big play threat last year?

To answer this question, most people would focus on one metric: yards per reception. Most people are wrong. [continue reading…]

The 1991 Redskins are the hipster’s choice for greatest NFL team of the modern era. The team was statistically dominant, but what makes Washington’s case unique is that folks rarely mention the 1991 Redskins as one of the best teams of all time! Well, today I want to talk about that team’s star wide receiver: Gary Clark.

Judging wide receivers is very tough. One way to do that is to look just at their raw statistics, but a receiver’s production is heavily influenced by the environment he plays in — how often does his team pass, how talented is his quarterback, how good are the other targets on his team, etc.  At a high level, it’s easy to assume that the best receivers are playing on the best passing attacks: after all, if a passing game is dominant, the receivers are likely a big part of the reason why.

The 1984 Dolphins, 2004 Colts, 2007 Patriots, and 2013 Broncos all had record-setting passing attacks.  And while Dan Marino, Peyton Manning, and Tom Brady were great, but they also each had not one, but two star receivers: Mark Clayton and Mark Duper, Reggie Wayne and Marvin Harrison (and Brandon Stokley), Randy Moss and Wes Welker and Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker (and Wes Welker!).  That’s generally the rule, not the exception: dynamic offenses almost always have a great quarterback, but they also almost always have multiple top receivers.  The Falcons offense was outstanding last year, and it’s hard for a wide receiver to be better than Julio Jones, but even he only accounted for 28% of the Atlanta receiving yards and 16% of the Falcons receiving touchdowns (Jones also missed two games). [continue reading…]

If you find yourself talking about Rob Moore in the summer of 2017, it’s probably for one of four reasons.

1) You are a diehard Jets or Cardinals fan choosing to reminisce about Boomer Esiason and the halcyon days of the ’90s.

2) You just finished watching Jerry Maguire. That movie, which was released in December 1996, saw Cuba Gooding Jr. play the role of Rod Tidwell. Gooding’s character wore 85 and played wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals, just like Moore (who even had a bit role in the movie, playing himself).

3) You are researching the best players in Supplemental Draft history, and Moore’s name came up. A star at Syracuse, Moore graduated early (back when it was still unusual for undergraduates to enter the draft), and therefore elected to enter the Supplemental Draft. The move cost the Jets the 8th pick in the 1991 Draft, which the Eagles used on Tennessee offensive lineman Antone Davis. Moore was the much better player.

4) You were wondering which player in the last 25 years (and, perhaps, for much longer) saw the most targets in a single season in NFL history. After some searching, you found out that the answer was Rob Moore, with 208 targets for the 1997 Cardinals.

Wait, what? Of all the players in the last 25 years, Rob Moore is the single-season leader in targets? The single-season leaders in receptions, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns are Marvin Harrison, Calvin Johnson, and Randy Moss, respectively. The most targets (since 1992) that Jerry Rice ever saw was 176, and that was in 1995, when he gained 1848 receiving yards while playing for a 49ers team that threw 644 passes, the 2nd most in the NFL. So how did — just two years later — Rob Moore see 32 more targets than Rice in ’95? [continue reading…]

Three years ago, I looked at the top quarterback/receiving pairings in terms of total passing touchdowns between the two players. Per a comment suggestion, let’s update that list today. The top two pairs have not changed, but there has been some movement in the top ten.

Philip Rivers and Antonio Gates have now connected for 84 passing touchdowns, all of which came in the regular season. The list below includes the playoffs, and Young and Rice have combined for 85 regular season touchdown passes and 7 playoff scores. That means Rivers and Gates are two more touchdowns away from the second most regular season touchdowns in NFL history. Gates is tied for 6th all time in receiving touchdowns (111) with Tony Gonzalez: despite that, Gates has connected with a touchdown more often with Rivers than Gonzalez has with both Matt Ryan and Trent Green combined.

There’s another tight end duo creeping up the list: Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski have connected for 76 touchdowns, tied for fifth place on the list. Also at 76 touchdowns: Marques Colston and Drew Brees. The interesting note there: Colston retired without ever catching a touchdown pass from anyone besides Brees.

The table below shows the full list for combinations that have at least 25 touchdown strikes: [continue reading…]

Five years ago, in one of the first posts at Football Perspective, I looked at league-wide passing distribution in terms of what percentage of receiving yards were gained by the WR1, WR2, WR3, TE1, and RB1 for each team. Today I want to examine passing distribution in a different way: how much are teams spreading it around than ever before?

In the comments to Wednesday’s post, Quinton White described one way economists measure how concentrated industries are, using a relevant football example:

If you wanted to incorporate more than just the #1 guy, then you could sum up the squared shares for all a QBs receivers. For example, say a QB threw to 7 guys, and the first guy caught 30% of the yards and the second 20% and the remaining 5 guys each caught 10%, then he would have a concentration index of .3^2 + .2^2 + .1^2 + .1^2 + .1^2 + .1^2 + .1^2 = .18. The higher the number, the more concentrated the passer is. The max is 1 (Brees threw all his passes to Cooks then 1^2 = 1). If he threw 10% to ten guys each, then the index would be .1.

Let’s say we did that for the 2016 Falcons, who had the best passing game in the NFL last season. Atlanta’s skill position players gained 4,960 receiving yards last year. In the table below, column 2 shows the number of receiving yards gained by each player, column 3 displays their number of receiving yards divided by 4,960, and column 4 shows the squared result of what is in column 3. The bottom right cell in the table is the sum of all the numbers in column 4, or 14.14%. [continue reading…]

In 2016, Odell Beckham gained 34% of all Giants receiving yards, the highest share in the NFL. For 31 of 32 teams, at least one player gained 20% of their team’s receiving yards, but for the Bills, Robert Woods led the team in receiving despite being responsible for only 19% of Buffalo’s receiving yards.

But since Drew Brees came to the Saints in 2006, no team has spread it around more than New Orleans. On average, Brees’ leading receiving has been responsible for only 22% of the Saints receiving yards each year. The table below shows the average percentage of team receiving yards gained by the top receiver (RB, WR, or TE) for each team in each season over the last 11 years. The Falcons, buoyed by long runs of success by Roddy White and then Julio Jones, have been the most WR1-heavy passing game, while the Saints have been the most diverse: [continue reading…]

Five years ago, I asked two questions: how often does the first receiver selected in the Draft turn out to be the best rookie receiver? And how often does the best rookie receiver turn out to be the best receiver from his draft? Yesterday, we updated that post to answer the first question. Today, we look at the second one, and that makes Saints star Michael Thomas (who had 1,137 receiving yards as a rookie in 2016) the focus of this post.

How likely is it that Thomas will turn out to be the best receiver from his class? Thomas has some competition, but though he was farther ahead of the pack than the average top receiver:

So how optimistic should we be that Thomas will in fact finish as the top receiver from this class? You may be surprised to learn that from 1999 to 2013, the top rookie receiver (as measured by receiving yards) *never* finished as the top receiver from his class (as measured by receiving yards). Bookmarking those years? Randy Moss in 1998, and Odell Beckham in 2014. There are a few cases where the top rookie had a great career (Anquan Boldin, Marques Colston, and A.J. Green stand out) but ultimately was bested (to date, in the case of Green) by another star, but also a large number of guys who didn’t quite live up to their potential after year one.

You might be surprised to see that the median rank of these rookie receivers is just to finish fourth in their class. In recent years, we’ve seen Tampa Bay’s Mike Williams, Eddie Royal, and Tampa Bay’s Michael Clayton excel as rookies but have disappointing careers. Excluding the players from 2014, 2015, and 2016, the only receivers since 1982 to finish 1st as both a rookie and overall were Proehl, Galloway, and Moss.  Do you think there’s something there, or is that a fluke?

Another interesting: other than Antonio Brown, none of the receivers who wound up as the top receiver in their class really struggled as a rookie. Since 2002, Brown is the only one who didn’t rank in the top five.

Five years ago, I asked two questions: how often does the first receiver selected in the Draft turn out to be the best rookie receiver?  And how often does the best rookie receiver turn out to be the best receiver from his draft?  In the 2017 NFL Draft, the Titans selected Corey Davis, the excellent wide receiver from Western Michigan with the fifth overall pick.

At the time of my original post, the protagonist was Justin Blackmon, the highest selected receiver in the 2012 Draft.  And at the time, the odds looked ugly: from 1970 to 2010, only 4 out of 31 times did the first receiver drafted lead his rookie class in receiving yards: Ahmad Rashad in 1972, Isaac Curtis in 1973, Jerry Butler in ’79, and then Willie Gault in 1983.  When A.J. Green did it in 2011, it ended a streak of 27 straight years where the top receiver didn’t lead the league in receiving yards.

So what’s happened since then? Well, Blackmon did in fact lead all rookies in receiving yards, although the margin over T.Y. Hilton was just four yards. In 2013, Tavon Austin was the first wideout drafted, but he ranked 9th among that group in receiving yards as a rookie with 418. Instead, Keenan Allen (1,046) took top honors that year.

In 2014, Sammy Watkins was the first wideout selected in perhaps the best wide receiver class ever.  Watkins had a very good year with 982 yards (ranking 4th among wide receivers drafted that season), but that was a far cry behind Odell Beckham and his 1305 yards (in just 12 games).  But then two years ago, Amari Cooper joined Green and Blackmon by being the top rookie wide receiver in both the draft and the regular season. Cooper was the 4th overall pick and had 1,070 yards, beating undrafted Willie Snead (984).  Finally, last season, Corey Coleman was the first wide receiver drafted, but he had only 413 yards in 10 games.  In 2016, there was just one great rookie wideout: Michael Thomas had 1,137 yards, and no other rookie receiver had even 700 yards. [continue reading…]

Dez Bryant had a “down” year by most standards last season. He ranked 51st with just 796 receiving yards, and only moves up to 33rd in receiving yards per game (the Cowboys star missed three full games). But Dallas ranked 31st in team pass attempts last season, which significantly impacted Bryant’s ability to produce strong receiving numbers.

In terms of pro-rated Adjusted Catch Yards per Team Pass Attempt, Bryant ranked 9th (he ranked 11th in pro-rated receiving yards per Team Pass Attempt). What do I mean by that? Well, Adjusted Catch Yards are simply receiving yards with a 5-yard bonus for receptions and a 20-yard bonus for receiving touchdowns. Team pass attempts are just passes plus sacks for each team (the Cowboys had 511; the Dolphins were last with 507). And pro-rated? That multiplies the number of team pass attempts by a player’s number of games played, divided by 16.

Here were the leaders in this metric last season. You won’t be too surprised to learn that the leaders were Julio Jones, A.J. Green, and Antonio Brown, arguably the three best receivers in the NFL in 2016. [continue reading…]

On the surface, Kenny Britt didn’t have a remarkable season. He had just 1,002 yards, to go along with 68 receptions and 5 touchdowns. But then again, every receiver is playing in a different environment, and Britt’s environment was very, very bad.

The three teams with the worst passing stats in 2016 — from a cumulative perspective — were Buffalo, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The Bills had a below-average passing offense but rank at the bottom because the team threw the fewest passes in the league, which makes is tough for a receiver to produce good stats. The 49ers were in the bottom 10 in ANY/A and were one of just four teams that didn’t hit the 500-attempt mark. And the Rams were — by a large margin — the worst passing team in the NFL from an efficiency standpoint, thanks in part to Jared Goff having one of the worst rookie seasons ever.

Britt had 1,422 Adjusted Catch Yards — calculated by giving 5 yards for every reception and 20 yards for every touchdown — which ranked just 26th last season. But the Rams offense as a whole had just 5,153 total ACY, so Britt had 28.0% of all Los Angeles Adjusted Catch Yards. And Britt missed one game: on a pro-rated basis, he had 29.8% of all Rams ACY, calculated as 1422 * (Games Played * 5153/16).

That’s good enough for 5th best in the NFL last year. The leader by this metric was A.J. Green of the Bengals, who took over as options 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the Cincinnati passing attack with Mohamed Sanu gone, and Tyler Eifert limited to just eight games. Green had 1,374 ACY in 10 games, but more impressively, he had 34.4% of the Bengals team ACY on a pro-rated basis. [continue reading…]

Larry Fitzgerald led the NFL in receptions this year, with 107. That’s good, but how important is leading the league in catches? The triple crown is thought of as the leaders in receptions, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns, but I think we can all agree that receiving first downs is a better indicator of receiver play than receptions. If I was in charge of stats-keeping, I’d place far more emphasis of receiving first downs than receptions, because receptions that don’t go for first downs are far less valuable than receptions that do go for a first down. And while receptions may be a decent proxy for receiving first downs, there’s a lot of variance there.

The leader in receiving first downs this year was Mike Evans, and he certainly had a better statistical year than Fitzgerald.  Evans had a stat line of 96-1321-12, with 81 first downs, compared to Fitzgerald’s 107-1023-6 and 59 first downs.  That’s right: Evans had 22 more first downs on just 11 fewer grabs, thanks to his 84.4% first down rate compared to Fitzgerald’s 55.1%. Evans dominated the league in this metric, finishing with 15 more than anyone else. ^[1]Best as we can tell, the record for receiving first downs in a season was 92, shared by Calvin Johnson (2012) and Marvin Harrison (2002), until Julio Jones broke it last year with 93. Evans finished with 6 out of the 100 votes cast for the AP All-Pro team, which seems like a criminally low number that would be higher in first downs were as widely-reported as they should be.

In the interest of data disclosure, the table below shows the receptions, receiving yards, touchdowns, *and receiving first downs* for the top receivers last season. I have also included each player’s receiving first down percentage, and their total number of Adjusted Catch Yards, defined here as receiving first downs * 9, plus receiving yards, plus receiving touchdowns * 11 (because a receiving TD already gets 9 yards since it is counted as a first down, too). [continue reading…]

Today’s guest post comes from one of the longest followers of this blog (and its predecessor), Richie Wohlers. Richie is 44-year-old accountant from Southern California who is a Dolphins fan despite never being to Florida. As always, we thank our guest posters for contributing.

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Previously, I looked at linebackers and centers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. With Andre Johnson’s recent retirement announcement, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at wide receivers next. As before, I am just taking a look at post-merger players by using some objective factors to try to get a picture of what a typical HOFer looks like. Those factors are All-Pros, Pro Bowls, Weighted AV, Total AV, Super Bowl Appearances and Super Bowl wins). I am going to classify all players into a single position for simplicity. If you are interested in knowing the details of my calculation, see footnote. ^[1]Methodology: For All-Pros, Pro Bowls, Career AV and Total AV, I am looking at the average numbers for each player at his position. In an attempt to make the average HOFer at a position worth 100 … Continue reading

I explored the relationship between statistics (receptions, yards, touchdowns) and HOF induction for WRs, and it doesn’t improve the correlation. My “Career Score” is more aligned with HOF inductions than any single receiving statistic. The correlations are hurt by weak stats from HOFers like Swann and Hayes. And they are also hurt by big numbers from non-HOFers like Henry Ellard, Harold Jackson and Football Perspective hero Jimmy Smith. [continue reading…]

For his career, Eric Decker has 5,222 receiving yards and 52 receiving touchdowns.  That means he’s grabbed one touchdown catch for every 100.4 receiving yards, an incredible ratio for a non-tight end.  And while touchdons can be fluky, that doesn’t feel the way with Decker, who has been a touchdown machine for his entire career across two teams and multiple quarterbacks.

To put this into perspective, I looked at all wide receivers who entered the NFL since 1978 who have at least 2,000 receiving yards through the end of the 2015 season.  Decker has the third lowest (i.e., most touchdown-heavy) rate at a touchdown every 100.4 receiving yards ^[1]For Decker, I included 2016, but for every other player, I have not updated their numbers, if any, with the results of this year.  The only two players ahead of him? Randy Moss and Dez Bryant.

In the graph below, I’ve plotted career receiving yards (’78-’15) on the X-Axis, and Receiving Yards/Receiving Touchdowns( ’78-’15) on the Y-Axis. In that case, lower = more of a touchdown machine. [continue reading…]

In 2012, the Houston Texans went 12-4 and sent a whopping 7 offensive players to the Pro Bowl: QB Matt Schaub, RB Arian Foster, WR Andre Johnson, TE Owen Daniels, LT Duane Brown, LG Wade Smith, and C Chris Myers. But the success of that group probably feels like a distant memory, especially if you’ve looked at the Texans roster recently. Of that group, only Brown is still a Texan. In fact, Brown and RT Derek Newton are the only offensive players on the opening day rosters in both 2012 and 2016.

The Houston Texans threw a lot of money at Brock Osweiler this offseason, and also signed running back Lamar Miller. But a big reason for the turnover is that the wide receiver position has been completely remodeled: DeAndre Hopkins (24 years old, a first round pick in 2013), Will Fuller (22, 2016-1), Braxton Miller (24, 2016-3), Jaelen Strong (22, 2015-3), Keith Mumphery (24, 2015-5) are the five wide receivers on the team, while the tight end group (Ryan Griffin (26, 2013-6), C.J. Fiedorowicz (24, 2014-3), and Stephen Anderson (undrafted 2016) from Cal) is similarly young and new to Houston. [continue reading…]

Seven years ago, I wrote an article for the old PFR blog about Cowboys tight end Jason Witten. That article was titled Jason Witten (HOF Class of 2024). At the time, it felt a little premature, but Witten’s numbers were outstanding, and it seemed likely he would retire with HOF numbers.

Three years ago, I updated that post, and noted that Witten hadn’t slowed down.  Today? I wanted to provide another quick update.  Jason Witten completed his age 33 season in 2015.  And here’s the killer stat: nobody in NFL history has more receptions through their age 33 season than Jason Witten. [continue reading…]