The Browns wide receiver depth chart is really, really thin.  As a result, Cleveland attacked the wide receiver position in the Draft, starting with Baylor Bear Corey Coleman at 15, making him the first wide receiver taken. The Browns followed that up with Auburn’s Ricardo Louis in the fourth round, and UCLA’s Jordan Payton and Colorado State’s Rashard Higgins in the fifth round. The veterans on the depth chart? There’s only Andrew Hawkins, Taylor Gabriel, Marlon Moore, and Terrelle Pryor (who has made a position switch from quarterback) remaining, after the team released Brian Hartline in late May.

Last year, the Browns threw 609 passes (ignoring sacks), the 11th most in the NFL. If you expect Cleveland to be bad again this year — which just about everybody does — that number may only go up. In 2013, Cleveland threw 679 times, as Josh Gordon and Jordan Cameron had breakout years. ^[1]In between, the Browns went 7-9 with an excellent pass defense that kept the team in games; I am not expecting that to happen again. Gordon is a key variable here, of course: his status for the 2016 season remains up in limbo and is in the commissioner’s discretion.

That said, the situation certainly feels ripe for Coleman to have a monster season when it comes to targets. This is easily the worst wide receiver depth chart in football, and given that the Game Script will likely force Cleveland to throw often, Coleman should be the recipient of those passes pretty frequently. The Browns do have a good pass-catching back in Duke Johnson and a good (albeit perhaps fluky?) receiving tight end in Gary Barnidge, but they already combined for 140 catches on 199 targets last year.

Thought of another way, last year, Travis Benjamin (125, now in San Diego) and Hartline (77) combined for over 200 targets in 2015. How those get allocated among Coleman and the rookies will be an interesting question. But it made me wonder: what is the record ^[2]Since 1992, the first year PFR has targets data. for targets in a season? The answer is 167, set by Terry Glenn on a pass-happy 1996 Patriots team, with Anquan Boldin (165) and Kelvin Benjamin (145) rounding out the top three. The fourth man on the list is an interesting one: it’s Kevin Johnson on the expansion Browns, which may be more applicable to Coleman’s situation than any other. Still, that Browns team, while terrible, passed “only” 492 times.

The graph below shows every rookie receiver with at least 100 targets, with that number plotted on the Y-Axis. On the X-Axis? His team’s number of pass attempts. As you can see, there’s a bit of a correlation there:

The quarterback situation in Cleveland isn’t pretty — it’s a battle among Robert Griffin III, Josh McCown, and rookie Cody Kessler — but that is more likely to impact production than targets. If Coleman plays 16 games, I’d have a hard time projecting him for under 132 targets, which is what Justin Blackmon (another Big 12 receiver on a pass-happy college offense) had on a bad Jaguars team in 2012.

What do you think?