NFLytics: Is there a model for elite receivers?
One of the biggest storylines in the NFL this year has been the decrease in scoring. Only one other time this decade (2017) has the league seen offenses dip under 44 total points per game and passing yards are down more than 30 yards per game since 2020. Despite the broader numbers suggesting that life is harder on offenses, top receivers are still thriving. Last year 25 receivers finished with at least 1,000 yards. This year 29 receivers are on pace to clear that mark.
Business may be good for a lot of receivers, but there are only a handful that could reasonably be called the NFL’s best — they are the ones who set franchise records and drive offenses regardless of double teams, deep zones, press coverages and whatever other plans opponents dial up against them. They are the type that teams are willing to pay $20-plus million per year or trade first-round picks to acquire.
But aside from putting up impressive box score statistics, what makes the top receivers who they are? Why is a small group of players so much better than the solid starters?
Powered by the data prowess of football analytics pioneer Brian Burke, the website FiveThirtyEight used NFLNextGEN tracking data to answer that question. They took three categories that are fundamental to excellence at the position — getting open, catching the ball and running after catch — and used the data to quantify those areas on a 1-100 scale for each player.
How can we figure out if someone was open based on tracking data? Burke explained it this way: “The probability of a catch of a typical receiver, given all the contextual details of a pass route, including route type, depth, coverage and many other variables, we can set a benchmark of expected ‘openness’ agnostic to the ability of the receiver to get open.”
The catch and yards-after-catch metrics are straightforward. How often does a receiver bring in the football above what was expected based on the locations of the player and defenders and how many more yards were gained after the catch based on those same factors.
These three elements alone can tell us a lot about top wide receivers and why they dominate. There’s also more that we can add to the mix from other data sources to contextualize their games. How did they perform at the NFL Combine? Where do these receivers line up? How often do they go downfield?
With these metrics we can paint a picture of each receiver’s strength and style.
Here are the receivers we will be studying: AJ Brown, Stefon Diggs, Justin Jefferson, Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, Deebo Samuel, DeAndre Hopkins, Tyler Lockett, Ja’Marr Chase, and Cooper Kupp.
Elite receivers come in all shapes, sizes and speeds
Relative Athletic Scores gathers NFL Combine results, factor in height and weight and weigh them versus all the other players who participated and spits out a score that indicates the percentile of overall athleticism of the player. For example, at 6-foot-5, 239 pounds, Calvin Johnson ran a 4.35 40-yard dash and jumped 42.5 inches. He is the 100th percentile because there has never been a better athlete at the receiver position in the Combine’s history. Here’s how our crop of elite receivers compare:
Notice that every one of them is above average but there is a huge gap between Jefferson, Hill and Chase, and Hopkins, Kupp and Diggs.
When we dig deeper into the specifics, these masters of their craft are very different. Diggs is 6-foot and had very underwhelming broad jump and 10-yard split numbers but he ran a 4.46 40-yard dash and his 10-inch hands ranked in the 87th percentile. Kupp ran a dreadful 4.62 40 and jumped just 31 inches. On the other end of the spectrum, Chase ran a 4.34 and jumped 41 inches. Brown weighed in at 30 pounds heavier than Diggs and ran the same 40.
It does not appear that there is any specific speed/jumping requirement to be one of the league’s best receivers. However, teams tend to draft higher based on some of those measurements, particularly the 40-yard dash. Last year PFF studied the correlations between Combine events, draft position and success. Here’s what they found:
Even the Combine drills that do correlate to success do not have strong enough connections for NFL teams to use them in their draft philosophies. You wouldn’t draft one receiver over another because of slightly bigger hands or a tiny edge in his 10-yard split or vertical, especially when some of the best can’t even dunk a basketball.
It is interesting that size has an inverse relationship with draft status and success, suggesting that it’s overvalued by teams. None of our elite subjects is taller than 6-foot-2.
Literal separation from the pack
One of the reasons that height/weight/speed don’t predict elite level receiving play is because it’s a highly technical position. We see that play out in the openness metrics.
In order to give ourselves a bigger sample size, the numbers for openness, catching ability and YAC are from 2020-2022. The FiveThirtyEight data shows nine out of the 10 elite receivers being above average when it comes to getting open. Six of them ranked in the top 13 and all except Deebo Samuel scored in the top 30.
The top players on this list — Diggs, Brown, Jefferson and Adams — are considered the best technicians in the game. It stands to reason that route-running prowess would connect to openness and the most open receivers would be the ones easiest to find for quarterbacks but it’s a little more complex than that. Receivers face two types of coverage: Man and zone. The NFL isn’t just about winning a one-on-one battle, it can also be about finding the right spaces in zones, properly reading defenses and getting schemed looks by coaches.
Prior to this season PFF looked at the top performing receivers against both types of coverage — and it should come as no surprise that many of the same names show up among the best of the best. Interestingly, Cooper Kupp’s NextGEN open rating was not quite as high as the other route running wizards but he ranked among the best versus man and zone. So did Jefferson, Adams and Chase. The receiver with the most stark difference was Samuel, who crushed zone coverage but struggled versus man, which is in line with his open rating — though PFF notes in its write-up that Samuel rarely was matched up against man coverage because his coach Kyle Shanahan is good at his job.
Finding the guys who get open seems rather obvious but the FiveThirtyEight metric could be used to spot underrated receivers who might not get the football as much as they are open. For example, Patriots WR Jakobi Meyers ranks third in his ability to get open but hasn’t played in air-it-out passing games so his box score stats aren’t as impressive as our other elite receivers. The Jaguars just smartly traded for suspended Calvin Ridley, who is fourth. On the other side of that coin, Green Bay made bets on Sammy Watkins and Randall Cobb, who both rank in the bottom 20.
Making a catch
The most fundamental element of being a receiver is catching the ball. But do you have to be top-10 at bringing in everything around you in order to be considered the cream of the crop? The data seems to suggest that being above average is mostly needed but having the best hands in the league isn’t required to be elite.
(It should be noted that only two players have “catch” scores over 80, so the numbers in the 70s are in the top 15).
Once again Samuel is the outlier for being well below average at bringing in the football but neither Brown nor Hill are the next coming of Randy Moss when it comes to spectacular catches. The best two receivers by the FiveThirtyEight metrics are Donovan Peoples-Jones and Kendrick Bourne, which might tell us that it’s wonderful to be able to Moss opponents from time to time but the more down-to-down skill is getting open.
But the lower-scoring players are unique in their own way. Hill still has a case for the fastest player in the league, Brown is a human truck and Samuel is so dynamic that these guys don’t have to go up over defenders, whereas it’s part of the value of Hopkins and Lockett to consistently bring in contested and difficult catches.
Unless your name is Deebo, it seems there’s a baseline for catching the ball in order to be top-notch. Denver’s Jerry Jeudy rates well above average at getting open but stands as the NFL’s worst receiver since 2000 at catching the ball. Pittsburgh’s Diontae Johnson is No. 2 at getting open and 77th of 89 at making the catch.
Run, elite receiver, run
And now we see how Samuel can become an All-Pro despite falling short in the other metrics. He is a massive outlier among top receivers, scoring 13 points higher at Yards After Catch (YAC) than No. 2 (Chase).
It speaks to the idea that receivers can come in different sizes and have different skill sets but if they have a superpower it can make up for their shortcomings.
And then there’s the case of Kupp, who is good at everything. He doesn’t rank at the top of openness, catching or YAC but he’s 29th, 11th and 8th, respectively. Having no weaknesses is as good as having one unbelievable strength.
Spotting players without a weakness might be harder for teams in their evaluation processes. Players get drafted because they pop on tape, not because they are consistently very good all over the field. Maybe that’s worth re-thinking.
It’s worth noting that Deebo’s emergence was followed by a bunch of draft prospects who were tabbed as a Deebo-esque. Finding another Deebo, however, might not be all that likely. Teams should probably focus on route runners over players they believe will be special after the catch.
Use them any way you want
We’re going to pair our final two metrics together: How often our group lines up at outside wide receiver and how often quarterbacks push the ball downfield to these fellas.
When Kupp had one of the best seasons in NFL history in 2021 there was talk around the league of moving elite receivers around and sliding them into the slot more often. The PFF usage numbers tell us that every one of these marvelous receivers is capable of playing somewhere other than the traditional outside WR role. However, Kupp is the only one who spends more time in the slot than outside — and by a wide margin.
The question is whether other teams should be following the Kupp model or not. It’s hard to argue that these players’ coaches are getting it wrong considering they are 10 of the most successful receivers in the league. Lining up outside in particular gives quarterbacks more opportunities to take deep shots than when lining up in the slot. Not that it’s impossible (see: Slot fade) but rather most offenses are designed to have the ball pushed to where they can get one-on-one matchups rather than the muddied middle of the field.
That ties into the elite receivers’ average depth of target…
Most of the best receivers are getting targeted 10 or more yards downfield somewhere between 40%-50% of the time but YAC monster Samuel and the samurai of the slot Kupp are not.
The bottom line
When it comes to the NFL’s best receivers, one size does not fit all but all have exceptional traits in one way or another. In almost all cases that has to start with the ability to get open. Outliers are just that.
What these numbers allow us to do is study which receivers might deserve the ball more often and which might have red flags because they can’t create separation. It also shows us that despite the rise in quality performances by receivers there are still those who stand above the rest and with this data we can see why.
