There are a few ways to get a lot of receiving yards.
One way is to play with a good quarterback, assuming that is defined as a quarterback who averages a high number of yards per attempt. This is pretty self explanatory.
Another way, though, is to play with a quarterback who throws a lot of passes. For example, we know that Russell Wilson is a much better quarterback than Derek Carr. The stats back this up, too: Wilson has averaged 7.82 Y/A for his career; by comparison, Carr has averaged just 6.54 Y/A for his career. But Carr has averaged 36.2 pass attempts per game, while Wilson is at just 29.5. As a result, Carr has averaged 237 passing yards per game, while Wilson has averaged only 231 passing yards per game. Since every passing yard is a receiving yard, it’s actually been better to play with Carr than Wilson if your goal was to get a lot of receiving yards.
So, you might realize, if receiving yards just equals gross passing yards, then having a good quarterback is only half the equation.
Receiving Yards = (Yards/Attempt) x Attempts
So if you are a receiver, you want to play on a team that has a good passer, or passes a lot, or better yet — both! On the other hand, a wide receiver can’t control these things. We would naturally expect that the same wide receiver would gain fewer yards if he suddenly played for a team with a worse passer and if that team passed less often.
So can we control for this? You might think that we should focus more on percentage of team receiving yards, rather than raw receiving yards. For example, this might mean a receiver with 1,000 receiving yards on a team that threw for 3,000 yards was “better” than a receiver with 1,200 receiving yards on a team that threw for 4,000 yards. After all, the first receiver had 33.3% of his team’s passing game, while the second receiver had just 30% of his team’s passing game.
But there are issues with that, too. Let’s assume that both teams threw 500 passes, so the team that threw for 3,000 yards averaged just 6.0 yards per attempt, while the team that threw for 4,000 yards averaged 8.0 yards per attempt. A team that averages 6.0 yards per attempt is a very bad passing team, while a team that averages 8.0 yards per attempt is a very good passing team. But here’s the question: is it “better” or “more impressive” to be responsible for 33.3% of a very bad passing game or 30.0% of a very good passing game?
Sometimes, it helps to look at an actual example. Let’s use Reggie Wayne, who had a career with a lot of change. He played with Peyton Manning, in years where Manning was legendary and just pretty good. He played with Andrew Luck, and then also in 2011 when the Colts had a terrible passing game. He played with Marvin Harrison, Pierre Garcon, and T.Y. Hilton, but also had years where Anthony Gonzalez was the team’s #2 receiver.
Here is Wayne’s career, with lots of stats on both him and the Colts passing game. The columns are, in order, year, age, games, receptions, targets, receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, team receiving yards, team receiving yards rank, team pass attempts, yards per attempt, yards per attempt rank, percentage of team receiving yards, and receiving yards per pass attempt.
Wayne had four great seasons within a 100-yard band of 1260-1359 yards, and they came several years apart: 2006, 2009, 2010, and 2012. He also had a great year in 2004, but his best season came in 2007.
In ’07, Harrison was injured after just five games, while he still had a great quarterback in Manning. This was Wayne’s third-biggest target season, but his biggest target season in Manning’s prime. The Colts ranked 5th in yards per attempt but didn’t actually pass that frequently: Wayne had a huge year because he had a whopping 36% of the team’s receiving yards. He also had a career high 2.74 receiving yards per team pass attempt.
In 2006, the Colts were a slightly better passing team and passed a few more times. But with a healthy Harrison, Wayne had fewer targets, and a smaller percentage of the team pie. Still, ’06 was a great season because he played on a great passing offense and still got 30% of the team yards.
Let’s look at the ’10-’11’-12 set of years. What’s interesting is that Wayne had between 29% and 31% of the team’s receiving yards those three years, but those were three very different seasons.
2010 was Manning’s last season; The Colts had a ton of passing attempts but Manning was injured and not exactly his former self; the Colts actually were below-average in yards per attempt. But Wayne had 1,355 yards in large part because of that high pass attempts number. He also had Wayne averaged just 2.00 yards per team pass attempt, so this looks less impressive than his earlier seasons, but how much of it is due to Wayne and how much is it due to Manning being out of his prime?
Then, 2011 happened. The Colts ranked 29th in yards per pass attempt, and while Wayne actually increased his percentage of the pie, he had his first sub-1000 yard season since ’03. The Colts passed just 534 times and were bad at it: Wayne did all he could, although one could argue that a knock on his season was that Garcon (70/947/6) had almost identical numbers. Wayne could have distanced himself more from Garcon, perhaps, but otherwise, Wayne couldn’t do much about his receiving yards or RY/TPA.
Luck arrived in 2012, and Wayne’s numbers bounced back (also, Hilton replaced Garcon). The Colts Y/A rose by nearly a full yard and Indianapolis had nearly 100 more pass attempts. Wayne’s receiving yards rose by nearly 400 yards, but was he much (any?) better than he was in 2011 — or did he just have a better passing game?
What about during Manning’s legendary season of ’04? Wayne had a great year, but he “only” had 26% of the Colts receiving yards. Was that year worse than what he did in ’11? Or,is being 26% of a historically dominant passing game better than being 30% of a horrible passing game? Wayne did edge out Harrison to lead the ’04 Colts in receiving yards, after all.
Ultimately, I don’t have any answers yet on the best way to adjust a receiver’s situation to figure out which years are most impressive. But exercises like this at least help ground the process. What do you guys think?