*New Sim Analysis 2: Revenge of the WRs - Printable Version +- International Simulation Football League (https://forums.sim-football.com) +-- Forum: Community (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) +--- Forum: Media (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=37) +---- Forum: Graded Articles (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=38) +---- Thread: *New Sim Analysis 2: Revenge of the WRs (/showthread.php?tid=30326)

*New Sim Analysis 2: Revenge of the WRs - shrub02 - 02-27-2021 ** Please split pay 93% @shrub02, 5% @Gragg9 for inspiration, and 2% @Painted just for being there ** ** This research was based on stats through week 13 ** So I wrote an article the other day about how the new sim has impacted TEs and WRs. My conclusion was basically that TEs have been buffed (not enough though!) and that WRs had been somewhat nerfed. You can find it here if you haven’t read it already and are interested (New sim winners and losers: TEs and WRs). In a discussion about these findings with gragg and painted, gragg brought up an interesting question: Why is there a general consensus around the league that WRs are performing better this year if they had been nerfed? Intrigued, I had to do a deeper dive into the data. With that said, here is the state of the new sim: round 2! This time around I have chosen to focus specifically on WR stats from S26 and S27. I split the WRs into three groups based on their rank in receiving yards on their team: primary WRs, secondary WRs, and third-string receivers. I then averaged the stats of each group in order to get a better idea of how they fare in the new sim. I left out fourth stringers and below because there weren’t enough of them. You can see the results in the tables below. I’ve color coded the S27 categories so you can easily see if there was an improvement. Green = improvement, red = worse, yellow = no significant difference (thanks for the idea painted!) The first thing that I want to mention is that each group experienced a drop in YPC. This is what I was hitting on in my last article when I said that WRs have been nerfed. This data seems to back up my previous theory as primary and secondary WRs both saw their YPC drop by a significant amount:  22.12% decrease for primary WRs and 26.90% for secondary WRs. The new sim treated third-string WRs more favorably, only seeing their YPC 9.53% worse. As you will see, this is a trend that will continue throughout this review. Ok, now we are going to get to the data that I think is the reason behind the league’s positive perception of WRs production in the new sim. The first of these stats is receptions per game. Every group saw a significant increase in this category. Primary WRs experienced a 42.01% increase, secondary WRs produced 54.08% more catches, and third-string WRs saw a whopping 69.82% more receptions. With WRs catching the ball a lot more, it's easy to see how viewers may consider them buffed. To add some context to the increase in receptions per game, let’s look at each group’s target share, or percentage of passes they received. For this data point, I excluded RBs, FBs, and TEs, because I really didn’t feel like digging through the stats of several more position groups. Besides, the focus of this article is WRs. So this data is only representative of each group’s share of receptions in relation to each other. The only group that had a negative effect is primary WRs, who saw their share of targets drop by almost 3 percentage points. Both secondary and third-string WRs had their share of targets increase. Although secondary WRs’ increase was insignificant, rising less than 1 percentage point. Third-stringers, on the other hand, saw an increase of almost 3 percentage points. This makes sense because, as I stated above, they saw a pretty big increase in receptions per game. Another stat that I believe has added to the view that WRs have been buffed is receiving yards per game. As you can see in the chart, each group has improved their yards per game average this year. Primary and secondary WRs saw a modest gain in yards per game, increasing 9.14% and 12.18% respectively. Yet again we observe third-string WRs improving the most, by far, increasing their yards per game by 47.99%. We can examine each group’s yardage share to gain further insight into how impactful the increase in yards per game was. Like target share, this data is relative to only primary, secondary, and third-string WRs. Both primary and secondary WRs had their share of receiving yards decrease from the previous season. Primary WRs’ share went down 3.23 percentage points, while secondary WRs lost 1.44. The third-string WRs were the only group to see their share of yards increase, up 4.67 percentage points. This makes sense as they saw the most growth in receptions per game and smallest decrease in YPC. Possibly the biggest reason that WRs seem like they are doing much better in the new sim is their newfound big play ability. Every group had significant improvements in their average longest play. Primary WRs increased their longest play by an average of 24.77%, secondary WRs grew by 10.23%, and third-stringers improved 21.7%. While this may appear that primary and third-string WRs benefitted almost equally, I would argue that the impact is much greater on primary WRs because the actual yardage increase was quite a bit more. Because #1 receivers had a much higher average longest catch in S26, their increase in S27 actually netted them 14.72 more yards. Third-stringers only grew by 8.15 yards. This increase in long plays demonstrates WRs ability to now make explosive, game changing plays in the new sim. The last bit of data that I will look at is touchdowns per game. Interestingly enough, each group improved .04 touchdowns per game. While that doesn’t seem like a lot, it actually is a combined increase of 10.91%. Seeing an extra receiving touchdown every once in a while can really do a lot to sway perceptions of how well WRs are doing. So to conclude, I would say that receivers’ on the field performance has changed in a way that makes them get better stats and more exciting to watch. The fact that they have a lower YPC average is offset by them getting more catches, gaining more yards, and creating more explosive plays. Primary WRs are definitely making more elite plays, secondary WRs have not had their performance hindered, and third-stringers are getting more action. All of this is appealing to fans of the WR position. So what does all of this mean? What’s my idea on how to improve the new sim? I think that it means that we should continue to buff tight ends to the point that they are the most elite position! Wait, no wrong article… Honestly, I think this analysis shows that the new sim has done a good job of redistributing the impact of WRs to its lower tier members while keeping the best ones elite. It makes for fun viewing. Keep it up and don’t change anything in this aspect. 1,119 words RE: New Sim Analysis 2: Revenge of the WRs - Gragg9 - 02-27-2021 Sounds like the league is gunna need to build depth at CB and S ASAP RE: New Sim Analysis 2: Revenge of the WRs - Painted - 02-27-2021 Great article, I'm honored to be mentioned though I probably didn't earn it lol! And it's always important to know the positions that the sim is handling well! RE: New Sim Analysis 2: Revenge of the WRs - qWest - 02-28-2021 I could definitely see this perception flipping next season if the power runner change allows RBs to be more reliable red zone options, thereby maybe taking some more TDs away from receivers. Overall though the more realistic ypc and big play ability for WRs has been great to see. Well done and well written.