by Bryan Frye
on May 28, 2021
Adam Steele is back with a long-awaited wide receiver edition of his beloved Wisdom of Crowds exercise. We thank him for the beautiful discussion it will prompt.
It’s been a few years since FP has run a Wisdom of the Crowds exercise, and this time around we’re going to do wide receivers.
For anyone wanting to submit a ballot, there are a handful of simple rules:
- You have 200 points to distribute among your choices for the greatest wide receivers of all time. The criteria for greatness is entirely up to you, and explanations in the comments are encouraged. You can use half points (but nothing smaller than that).
- No WR may be assigned more than 15 points. This is done to prevent a few over-weighted ballots from skewing the results.
- The maximum number of WR’s you may list is 50, but it’s okay to list fewer than that as long as the points sum to 200.
- Players whose career began before 1935 are not eligible because the earliest days of the NFL were too different from the modern game to make fair comparisons.
- Please compose and submit your ballot before reading anyone else’s.
- Ballots will be accepted for two weeks after the day this is posted.
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by Chase Stuart
on February 20, 2013
On Monday, I explained my methodology for ranking every wide receiver in football history, and yesterday, I presented a list of the best single seasons of all time. Today the career list of the top 150 wide receivers. As usual, I implemented a 100/95/90 formula, giving a player credit for 100% of his production in his best season, 95% of his value in his second-best season, 90% in his third year, and so on. The table below is fully sortable and lists the first and last year each person played wide receiver ; you can use the search feature to find the best receiver to ever play for each team (for example, typing ‘ram’ for the Rams ‘clt’ for the Colts.)
[continue reading…]
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by Chase Stuart
on February 19, 2013
Yesterday, I explained my methodology for ranking every wide receiver in football history. Today I’m going to present a list of single-season leaders, which presents some problems.
I think the method I described yesterday does a good job adjusting for era, as receivers are only given credit for their yards above the baseline, which is different each season. But there are some other complicating factors unique to football. Seasons have had varying lengths: a receiver who plays 12 games in a 12-game season can’t be penalized the way you would penalize a receiver who only plays in 12 games now. Since older receivers are generally at a disadvantage for many reasons, I decided to simply pro-rate the value for all non-16 game seasons as if it was a 16-game season. However, I have also included downward adjustments for players in other leagues and during World War II.
The table below lists the top 200 wide receiver seasons of all-time.
[continue reading…]
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by Chase Stuart
on February 18, 2013
We know how this story will end.
Regular readers know that one of my projects this off-season is to come up with a better way to grade wide receivers. I first attempted to
rank every wide receiver four years ago. That study, which I will reproduce this week, has some positives and negatives. My goal is to eventually come up with four or five different ranking systems, so consider the series this week to be the first of several ranking systems to come.
The first step in this system is to combine the three main stats — receptions, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns — into one stat: Adjusted Catch Yards. We know that a passing touchdown is worth about 20 yards, so I’m crediting a receiver with 20 yards for every touchdown reception. Next, we need to decide on an appropriate bonus for each reception.
We want to give receivers credit for receptions because, all else being equal, a receiver with more receptions is providing more value because he’s likely generating more first downs. I looked at all receivers over a 12-year period who picked up at least 30 receiving first downs. I then used the number of receptions and receiving yards those players had as inputs, and performed a regression to estimate how many first downs should be expected. The best-fit formula was:
[continue reading…]
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