Yesterday, we looked at the leaders in receiving yards per team pass attempt. Today, I want to look at the leaders in receiving yards per adjusted team pass attempt.

What do I mean by adjusted team pass attempts?  Let’s look at three players from last year: Julio Jones, DeAndre Hopkins, and Antonio Brown.  Those three had 1444, 1378, and 1533 yards, respectively, in 2017. And the Falcons, Texans, and Steelers had 530, 525, and 590 pass attempts, respectively, last year. This means Jones averaged 2.72 receiving yards per team pass attempt, Hopkins 2.62, and Brown 2.60. Pretty straightforward.

Except Jones played in 16 games, Hopkins 15, and Brown 14. If we assume Hopkins therefore only saw (15/16) * 525 pass attempts — or 492 pass attempts — then Hopkins averaged 2.80 receiving yards per adjusted team pass attempt. And if we assume Brown only saw (14/16) * 590 pass attempts — or 516 pass attempts — then Brown averaged 2.97 RY/aTPA.

With the right minimum number of games played (I used 60%), I think I like this better as a pure measure of effectiveness. Brown was more effective than Jones last year, and the 2.97 RY/aTPA better describes his season than the 2.60 RY/TPA. Jones, of course, is at 2.72 RY/TPA and 2.72 RY/aTPA. But by not adjusting for games missed, we are essentially making a missed game equal to a game where a player was healthy and caught zero passes. And that doesn’t seem appropriate.

Julio Jones also benefits from this… but in 2016. That year he missed two games, so he had 2.60 RY/TPA and 2.97 RY/aTPA. The great Steve Smith missed two games in 2008: he averaged 3.43 RY/TPA and an almost unfathomable 3.92 RY/aTPA that season. But this does help isolate some under the radar seasons.

For example, Herman Moore had a 1,686-yard season in 1995.  That year the Lions threw  605 passes, so Moore averaged an impressive 2.79 RY/TPA and 2.79 RY/aTPA that year, since he played a full season.  And yet Moore’s best season by this metric came in his second season: in 1992, Moore missed four games.  His 966 receiving yards doesn’t look that impressive on paper, and even his 80.5 yards/game average is nothing extraordinary (in fact, it’s only the 4th-best of his career). But those Lions had Dan Henning as offensive coordinator, and they didn’t pass the ball anywhere near as frequently as the Tom Moore-led Lions would later on.  Detroit ranked 27th in pass attempts that year in a 28-team NFL with just 406 attempts.  So Moore averaged 2.38 RY/TPA and a whopping 3.17 RY/aTPA that season.

Moore played week 1 that season and then missed the next four games; but from the Lions 6th game through the rest of the season, he was responsible for 42% of the team’s receiving yards!  He picked up 884 receiving yards while Lions passers had just 277 attempts, meaning Moore averaged 3.19 receiving yards per team pass attempt over Detroit’s final 11 games. Maybe 1992 wasn’t Moore’s best season, but he was a dominant force when on the field that year, a sign of the great career he was about to have.

The table below shows the leaders in Receiving Yards per adjusted Team Pass Attempt. This includes Moore as the leader in 1992. I have also included where those players ranked in raw Receiving Yards per Team Pass Attempt, so you can more easily identify players who played partial seasons.