I spent some time discussing Gary Clark’s 1991 season yesterday. It was really impressive in two notable respects: he accounted for a huge percentage of his team’s production, and his team’s production was easily the best in the league.

What was even more impressive? What Gene Washington did in 1970. That year, the 49ers had a phenomenal passing attack: San Francisco averaged 7.6 ANY/A, while no other team was above 6.0. John Brodie was the AP MVP because of his great passing numbers, but what was arguably more impressive is what Washington did that year. Playing for the best passing offense in football ^[1]And along with the ’66 Packers, the only offenses to average at least 7.50 ANY/A from 1961 to 1975., Washington caught 23% of the team’s passes, 37% of the 49ers receiving yards, and 48% of San Francisco’s receiving touchdowns.

If you calculate Adjusted Catch Yards with a 5-yard bonus on receptions and a 20-yard bonus on touchdowns, Washington had 1,605 ACY out of the 49ers 4,620 total team ACY, or 35%. That’s even higher than what Clark did on the ’91 Redskins (33%). On the other hand, WR1s tended to get slightly more attention on 1970 offenses than on 1971 offenses. So here’s what I did:

1) Calculate the ACY for each receiver on each team since 1970. For Clark in ’91, this was 1,890.

2) Calculate the percentage of team ACY for each receiving season since 1970. For Clark, this was 33%; for Washington, it was 35%.

3) Calculate the average percentage of team ACY for the top N receivers in the league each season, with N being equal to the number of teams in the NFL. For 1970, this was 29%; for 1991, it was 27%.

4) Calculate each receiver’s percent over average; for both Clark and Washington, this means +6%.

5) Calculate each receiver’s team RANY/A for each year. Clark’s Redskins were at +3.14, while Washington’s 49ers were at +3.45.

6) Plot those seasons in the graph below.

And for fans of big data, the table below shows all seasons since 1970 where a receiver ranked in the top N in percentage of team ACY.  Let’s use the Marvin Harrison line as an example. In 2004, playing for the Colts, Harrison’s team had a Relative ANY/A of +3.97. He had 1,843 Adjusted Catch Yards, while his team had 7,517 ACY. As a result, Harrison was responsible for 24.5% of Indianapolis’ ACY. That 24.5% figure ranked 29th in the league that year, while the league average (among the top 32 players in this metric) was 28.6%. As a result, Harrison’s “percentage of the pie” metric was at -4.1%, the difference between his ACY % and league average.   If you were wondering from the graph above what was that dot to the right and just below Washington — the player on the team with the best RANY/A to also have a positive ACY % differential — you can now see that it was Roger Carr.

Enjoy! The table has a ton of data, so please use the search function and poke around the numbers and post what stands out to you in the comments.