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Wide Receivers with the best hands: QB Adjusted Catch Rate

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I’ve often cited a player’s catch rate as a reason to buy into his opportunities for increased production in a coming season (or, to not). The logic itself is fairly sound, a guy who catches a lot of his targets historically is going to make good on increased opportunities… that said, one major failing of this approach is that it fails to account for nuances in QB play and accuracy.

Kenny Stills, for example, caught 78.8% of the passes thrown his way in 2014 – an impressive number – but it isn’t as easy as translating that catch rate to his new environment. After all, Ryan Tannehill (albeit he posted an impressive 66.4% completion rating last year) is no Drew Brees (69.2%).

Credit Pat Mayo of FNTSY Sports Network for making a clear point that catch rate cannot be considered in a vacuum (at the 5 minute mark of our appearance together on The Pat Mayo Hour) and the folks at Pro Football Focus, a group of minds far more analytical and wise than myself, for making the data available to begin with. Catch rate is indeed a two way street.

Brandin Cooks had a great catch rate in 2014, but how much of that came from playing with Drew Brees? (Photo: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images North America).

Brandin Cooks had a great catch rate in 2014, but how much of that came from playing with Drew Brees? (Photo: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images North America).

What follows is an assessment of a player’s QB Independent Catch Rate from last year. The logic is as follows: take a team’s total QB completion percentage, remove a player’s individual targets and receptions from the equation to determine the Quarterback’s completion rating on passes to other players on the team, and adjust a player’s catch rate for his QB’s accuracy.

The approach is imperfect for a number of reasons (caveats presented below the tables for the particularly ball-bustery scientifically minded) among you, and it also fails to account for a number of factors that PFF’s Mike Clay revealed go into making a completion vs. incompletion, but, at it’s base the tables below give us a view of some of the receivers with the best hands in the league… and those with the worst. The data below includes only players with 50 or more targets last year.

The Top 20 Wide Receivers with the Best Hands

NameTARec.% CtQB Comp %TM AttTm CmpAdj Comp %QB Adj CR
 Miles Austin674770.154.950327652.517.58
 Jarvis Landry105848066.359439463.416.61
 Golden Tate1369972.860.360236356.716.15
 Brandin Cooks655381.569.265945667.813.65
 Doug Baldwin906673.363.145328660.612.69
 Eric Decker1107467.357.749628654.912.38
 Julian Edelman1249274.264.461039361.912.27
 Wes Welker644976.665.760739964.512.14
 James Jones1087367.658.262736556.311.34
 Anquan Boldin1218368.660.248529257.411.18
 Kenny Stills806378.869.265945667.910.92
 Randall Cobb1259172.865.153634962.810.03
 Kendall Wright865766.358.351329956.79.63
 Andrew Hawkins1016362.454.9503276539.41
 Odell Beckham Jr.1299170.563.260638361.29.28
 Chris Hogan584170.762.757736261.88.85
 Jarius Wright60427062.351732261.38.73
 Emmanuel Sanders14010172.165.760739963.88.29
 Michael Crabtree1026866.760.248529258.58.21
 Larry Fitzgerald100636356.556632055.27.85
  • That both Kenny Stills and Brandin Cooks made the list is impressive, given that we noted their QB is already highly accurate. Cooks will play with that highly accurate QB again this year and is likely to benefit from an increased number of targets, and a comparable role in terms of those targets coming in and around the line of scrimmage more often than note. With that in mind, we should expect his 81.5% catch rate to be maintained (roughly speaking, anyhow) heading into 2015. Cooks, thus, shapes up to be a PPR monster with 208 targets departing New Orleans in Stills and Jimmy Graham.
    • As for Stills, he has a definite downgrade at QB, but the difference isn’t as stark as you’d think, as noted above. Particularly, Ryan Tannehill is quite accurate on intermediate routes (68.7% completions on passes thrown under 20 yards). Knowing that the team intends to carry their West Coast system forward another year, and that they are aware of Tannehill’s limitations as a deep ball passer, Stills could up his output considerably with a commensurate rise in targets. Last year’s 80, after all, is nothing. Mike Wallace takes 108 with him to Minnesota. Note: it was Stills’ 2014 catch rate that launched this investigation, but Pat’s point in the linked video above stands. I’d never get a retraction out of him, anyway.
  • Golden Tate, Jarvis Landry and Randall Cobb appearing on this list should not come as a significant surprise.
  • The presence of Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald shouldn’t either. The former teammates have been sapped of their explosion at this stage in their careers (Boldin never really had that trait, actually) but they still possess some of the surest hands in the league and on their teams. Those looking for increased roles for John Brown in Arizona and Torrey Smith in San Francisco are probably still on track for this year, but, their targets won’t necessarily come at the complete expense of the sure-handed veterans. Look for Boldin and Fitzgerald to remain engaged over the middle of the field. What they lack in explosiveness, they make up for in trustworthiness, a trait that should not be overlooked and won’t be on 1st and 3rd downs this year.
  • If we were expecting a significant upgrade in Geno Smith‘s accuracy this year, we could be excited about Eric Decker‘s production for the year ahead, given what he accomplished with QBs who threw for 57.7% completions in 2014, but… we’re not really excited about Smith, are we? You’ll see below that Decker could be expected to take differential advantage – at least in terms of receptions – of his work load split with Brandon Marshall this year, though.
  • Kendall Wright is an intriguing name. After a breakout 2013 season (94-1,079-2), his production dipped considerably last year, to just 57 catches for 715 yards. We’ve heard a lot of positive buzz around Marcus Mariota’s accuracy coming out of camp, and Ken Whisenhunt’s system is known to favor an accurate QB who can get the ball out quickly and the receivers who work well with him over the middle. Wright is a sneaky candidate for a bounce back 2015.
  • Michael Crabtree‘s bay area role is an intriguing situation to monitor after his departure from San Francisco a year ago. Most say he never regained top form after Achilles injuries sapped him of his downfield speed, but, given how the team sheltered Derek Carr last year (5.5 YPA, a league low) there is a case to be made for a steady set of hands over the middle, and Crabtree offered that to QB Colin Kaepernick (60.2% completions) last year.

The 20 Least Efficient Pass Catching WRs

NameTARec.% CtQB Comp %TM AttTm CmpAdj Comp %QB Adj CR
 Mike Wallace108676266.359439467.3-5.28
 Brandon Marshall1016160.46560939665.9-5.54
 Cordarrelle Patterson583356.962.351732263-6.06
 Rueben Randle1227158.263.260638364.5-6.26
 John Brown944851.156.556632057.6-6.53
 Charles D. Johnson553156.462.351732263-6.59
 Malcom Floyd865260.566.357338067.4-6.85
 Hakeem Nicks683855.962.166041062.8-6.94
 Michael Floyd934750.556.556632057.7-7.22
 Cecil Shorts102535258.255332259.6-7.65
 Mohamed Sanu975657.763.950132065.3-7.65
 Andre Holmes914751.658.262736559.3-7.73
 Torrey Smith894955.16255534463.3-8.2
 Vincent Jackson1387050.756.853030158.9-8.23
 Marques Colston965961.569.265945670.5-9.02
 Terrance Williams623759.768.947632870.3-10.59
 Kelvin Benjamin1427351.46054532763-11.63
 Sammy Watkins1246552.462.757736265.6-13.16
 Andre Roberts683652.966.754636468.6-15.72
 Justin Hunter662842.458.351329960.6-18.23
  • Mike Wallace had 22% of his targets over 20 yards last year so, his inconsistent output has a degree to do with Tannehill’s deep accuracy . Either way, a 62% catch rate will play just fine if he can maintain it with Teddy Bridgewater this year. Bridgewater’s 64% rookie year completion percentage is a bit of a downgrade from Tannehill, but, if you factor in some growth Wallace shouldn’t pace too far off last year’s marks.
  • Perhaps Jay Cutler should have been holding Brandon Marshall accountable, and not the other way around. I think Marshall is impressive as a man, and immensely talented as a football player but he’s leaving a QB who was 65.9% ‘accurate’ on passes to other wideouts last year for one who hit on 59.7% overall. Everyone expects a downgrade in production, but if last year’s 60.4% catch rate falls farther than we expect, it could be more significant than anyone realizes.
  • The presence of young breakout candidates John Brown and Charles Johnson on this list is somewhat troubling, but it is in part a result of their roles (27.7% of Brown’s targets came on passes of over 20 yards, as did 23.3% of Johnson’s). Brown in particular will need to show some growth in this area to match his pre-draft hype, particularly given a presumed fairly-even distribution among receivers in the desert.
    • It’s not a big surprise to see other young-guns Sammy Watkins and Kelvin Benjamin on the list either. Both were asked to take on a significant number of targets in their first years as the focal point of their team’s offenses.
  • Terrance Williams‘ low catch rate is disappointing, also. He may be in for an increase on his 62 targets from 2014, but, Dallas intends to stay run heavy this year so any growth will have to come from an improved catch rate.
  • The drop in accuracy from Joe Flacco to Colin Kaepernick isn’t all that significant for Torrey Smith, but the gap widens from 37.5% to 31% when considering completions on passes of over 20 yards. Many expect Smith to be tasked with taking the top off of defenses in San Fran, and another poor catch rate season may make Boldin all the more likely to maintain his share of the team’s targets.
The Logic, and the Flaws

Again, the logic for this approach is straightforward by design. There are countless variables that go into a receiver’s catch rate and production, as well as the individual factors affecting whether each play ultimately is, or is not a catch, but that level of analysis really isn’t in scope here.

What we tried to do is simple: look at how frequently a QB usually completes a pass (his completion percentage; and for the purposes of this study, we lumped all passes thrown by a team’s QBs together), account for a receiver’s individual impact on this (by removing his targets and receptions from the equation, arriving at a net completion percentage) and then study the difference (subtracting this new completion percentage from a WR’s catch rate). Those with higher positive differential caught more balls per target than they should have, given their QB’s accuracy when throwing elsewhere. Those with negative differentials, did not.

There are a number of limitations to the above analysis, including:

  • As noted above, PFF goes much deeper in their analysis. The data above does not account for throwaways, and other factors that PFF typically takes out of the equation when assessing a QB’s accuracy rate.
  • It also doesn’t include receiver drops, or calculations of catchable balls. We’re looking at raw data here, and again, PFF does a great job calculating a receiver’s true performance on catchable balls, assessing their individual drop rate. DeAndre Hopkins has shown great hands, for example, in his two years in the NFL and he doesn’t even make the list (he’s #29, btw).
  • In cases where multiple QBs threw a significant number of passes for a team, this does not account for the # of targets each player received from each individual QB last year. That, of course, is the crux of this analysis. Carson Palmer passes were about 8% more accurate than Drew Stanton‘s, for example, but the aggregate data analyzed does not account for this.
  • There is no assessment of the number of routes run, either. No QB in the league completed 50% of his deep routes last year, for example, so receivers who ran a disproportionate amount of routes over 20 yards are penalized here. There is no surprise, then, that many of our top 20 handiest receivers had low a-Dots in 2014.
  • I’m sure there are many more limitations. Again, the intent here isn’t to be overly scientific but to at least endeavor to account for QB impact on catch rates. For any other issues of note, let me have it in the comments.

The post Wide Receivers with the best hands: QB Adjusted Catch Rate appeared first on Fantasy Sports Locker Room.


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