With the conclusion of the regular season, ISFL awards season is upon us. With the drama and complaints of stolen awards, a group of users including myself have taken it upon ourselves to do a deeper dive into the season stats that many GMs are unable to do before casting their ballots, to provide an alternative to awards and/or a helpful guide for people voting on awards.
Yesterday, @mithrandir (one the ringleaders of the group) posted a super helpful spreadsheet of advanced stats. In this post, I will be diving through the data to understand who the best WR performers of Season 27 were. Let's get into it!
Reliability
One of the most important aspects of any receiver is their reliability. If a QB throws the ball their way, how much can they depend on the receiver making a positive play out of that pass attempt? To investigate this, I looked at a few measures. Below I'll briefly describe these measures, as well as show the top 10 WRs in each metric with some commentary.
Catch Rate
How many times did the receiver come down with a reception after getting targeted? This is obviously the most basic and important part of a wide receiver's job.
1. Michael Witheblock - 73.2%
2. Killian Chambers - 73.0%
3. William Alexander - 72.5%
T-4. Flash Panda - 71.7%
T-4. Adam Spencer - 71.7%
T-4. Mark Walker - 71.7%
7. Luca Scabbia - 71.2%
8. Raphael Delacour - 70.2%
9. Susan Cash Jr. - 70.0%
10. Kai Sakura - 69.7%
Drop Rate
Of passes thrown their way, how many did the receiver straight-up drop? While the result of a drop and a normal incompletion due to good coverage or an errant throw is the same, a drop is attributable for the most part directly to the receiver.
1. Luca Scabbia - 0.0% (!!!)
2. Sean O'Leary - 0.8%
3. Michael Witheblock - 1.3%
4. Tychondrius Hood - 1.5%
5. Thomas Passmann - 1.9%
T-6. Jed Podolak - 2.1%
T-6. Kai Sakura - 2.1%
T-6. Doug Howlett - 2.1%
T-9. Flash Panda - 2.2%
T-9. Leeroy Jenkins - 2.2%
First Down Rate
While the above two metrics look simply at whether the receiver could record a completion on a target, completing passes by itself isn't enough to win a football game. Teams depend on their receivers for chunk yardage to move the ball downfield and convert new sets of downs. First down rate looks at how many first downs the receiver was able to get on their plays divided by the number of times they caught the ball - how well did they convert their catches into useful offensive production?
1. Flash Panda - 63.6%
2. Kai Sakura - 60.6%
3. Mario Messi - 60.0%
4. Zach Crossley - 59.8%
5. Taro Raimon - 58.4%
6. Thomas Passmann - 57.6%
7. Sean O'Leary - 56.5%
T-8. William Lim - 54.5%
T-8. Darren Pama - 54.5%
10. Joshua Campbell / - 54.4%
Yards/Target
Similar to first down rate, yards/target is an attempt to quantify the ability to convert targets into offensive production, in this case receiving yards. While the yards/catch average listed in the index is interesting, it fails to account for all the 0-yard plays that happened because the receiver was targeted on an incompletion.
1. Tychondrius Hood - 11.6
2. Luca Scabbia - 10.6
3. Taro Raimon - 10.4
4. William Lim - 10.0
5. Mark Walker - 9.8
T-6. Flash Panda - 9.5
T-6. Ed Barker - 9.5
T-6. Michael Witheblock - 9.5
9. Joshua Campbell / - 9.1
10. Killian Chambers - 9.0
Opportunity
While reliability gives a sense of a receiver's efficiency on the targets they were given, the number of targets a receiver gets is often the result of their ability as well. A more competent receiver will often be able to work their way open for more targets, and although the mechanics of the sim may make this less true than in real football it's still an interesting metric to consider for awards.
Usage Rate
This statistic measures how many of a team's passing attempts went to a specific receiver over the course of the season. A higher usage rate belies a greater ability to give the QB a favorable throw or trust on the part of the team's offense to funnel targets towards them.
1. Jackson Kingston - 30.7%
2. Ed Barker - 29.9%
3. Michael Witheblock - 29.0%
4. Achtfünf - 28.0%
5. Videl-San - 27.6%
6. Jed Podolak - 26.8%
7. Taro Raimon - 26.4%
8. Tre'Darius J'Vathon - 26.3%
9. William Lim - 26.1%
10. Luca Scabbia - 24.41%
Yards per "Route Run"
This is one of the best metrics in real life football to look at receivers' ability to create yards by getting open. Unfortunately in the sim, it's very difficult if not impossible to come close to creating a count of "routes run" for each receiver, so what I have done to approximate this metric is just divide the receiver's yards by the number of passing plays the team run. For prominent receiving options, this should be basically equivalent since a high TPE WR will see the field on every offensive snap the team plays. We may miss some overperforming WR3's and such this way, but they're unlikely to be in awards contention anyway so I think it's an acceptable tradeoff.
1. Ed Barker - 2.64
2. Taro Raimon - 2.57
T-3. Tychondrius Hood - 2.52
T-3. Michael Witheblock - 2.52
5. William Lim - 2.44
6. Luca Scabbia - 2.39
7. Jackson Kingston - 2.28
8. Jed Podolak - 2.08
9. Flash Panda - 2.05
10. Tre'Darius J'Vathon - 2.00
Explosiveness
While players who can reliably catch the ball and convert first downs serve an important role for an offense, the best players are those who can change the game on a play-by-play basis by themselves. Breaking off explosive gains is one of the most exciting new aspects of the sim change to watch, and some players took exceptional advantage of this newfound ability this season.
Explosive Catch Rate
When the receiver was targeted, how likely were they to turn the play into a big gain of 20 yards or more (semi-arbitrary cutpoint decided by the sim's stat reporting)? In a sense, this measures just how game breaking the receiver was on a per-opportunity basis.
1. Tychondrius Hood - 18.5%
2. Taro Raimon - 13.9%
3. William Lim - 13.6%
4. Tre'Darius J'Vathon - 13.3%
5. Michael Witheblock - 12.8%
6. Joshua Campbell / - 12.6%
7. Darren Pama - 11.9%
8. Ed Barker - 11.4%
9. Luca Scabbia - 11.2%
10. Mark Walker - 11.0%
Passer Rating when Targeted
As passer rating is often treated as a go-to stat to encompass all of a QB's passing performance, why shouldn't we also use it for WRs? This uses the passer rating formula to determine what the QB's passer rating was only on throws that targeted the receiver in question. And yes, I did go through the index manually and tally the number of interceptions thrown on passes that targeted each receiver in the league to help generate this data.
1. Luca Scabbia - 130.9
2. Adam Spencer - 126.4
3. Tychondrius Hood - 122.7
4. Michael Witheblock - 118.7
5. Mark Walker - 116.5
6. Susan Cash Jr. - 115.9
7. William Lim - 113.5
8. Owen Holloway - 110.5
9. Ed Barker - 108.2
10. Jed Podolak - 105.5
QB-Independent Success
A QB obviously has a huge impact on their WRs' ability to produce. The receiver can only work with the balls that are thrown their way. To the extent possible, these next two metrics are a way to tease out how much of a receiver's production was a result of their individual talent rather than the QB throwing to them and the offensive environment they played within.
Completion Percentage over QB Expectation
To calculate this, I simply took the receiver's catch rate (receptions divided by targets) and subtracted from it their QB's completion percentage. This is thus a measure of how much more likely a pass was to be complete if their QB threw it at this specific receiver compared to anyone else on the team. Obviously this depends as well on the other teammates the receiver played with, but it can also be thought of as an indicator of how much value a receiver added to a team.
1. Susan Cash Jr. - +8.5%
2. Adam Spencer - +7.3%
3. Michael Witheblock - +7.1%
4. Luca Scabbia - +6.2%
5. Doug Howlett - +5.2%
T-6. William Alexander - +5.1%
T-6. Owen Holloway - +5.1%
8. Raphael Delacour - +4.8%
9. Cmon Skiuuup - +4.6%
10. Mark Walker - +4.5%
Passer Rating over QB Expectation
Combining the ideas behind the last metric and the last of the previous section, this measures how much a QB's passer rating "improved" when targeting a specific WR. It’s possible a WR had a not-as-great passer rating when thrown to due to problems with the QB play that they weren’t in control of, so this attempts to isolate their overall ability as measured by passer rating from the QB play they otherwise experienced.
1. Tychondrius Hood - +39.7
2. Susan Cash Jr. - +30.6
T-3. Luca Scabbia - +25.7
T-3. William Lim - +25.7
5. Adam Spencer - +22.5
6. Owen Holloway - +21.4
7. Michael Witheblock - +18.8
8. Mark Walker - +17.0
9. Doug Howlett - +14.7
10. Cmon Skiuuup - +12.9
Top 5 S27 Wide Receivers
Alright, let's get to the part with %controversy. I feel a need to preface this with a disclaimer that in my mind these top 5 are incredibly close. If these were presented to me on a ballot I would have a quite difficult time choosing between them. That said, I do think there's a fairly clear case for these 5 over any others (with the exception of a couple honorable mentions I'll get to at the end). So, here is how I personally would rank the top 5 WRs from S27 given the stats we discussed above.
5. Ed Barker
Season Stats: 111 catches on 185 targets, 1753 receiving yards, 13 TD
Listen, I told you this is an extremely strong group. Barker had an incredible year in the league and amassed the 2nd most yards and TDs of any receiver in the league. On top of that, he recorded a staggering 2.64 yards per passing play that the Second Line ran, clearly ahead of the rest of this group. He was a reliable target for his team and definitely played a large part in making their passing offense among the best in the league this season.
Although he was relied upon and targeted a huge number of times, his rate statistics were slightly below the rest of this group. He had the 9th highest passer rating when targeted, but this was actually the 2nd best on his team as his teammate Adam Spencer recorded the 2nd best in the league. This underscores the fact that he had a likely MVP QB throwing to him, and while he was surely a big part of his QB's performance as well that docks his performance a bit in my eyes. He only ranked around average for Passer Rating over QB Expectation, with +4.3. He caught only 60% of his targets (near the bottom of WRs with over 25 catches), and dropped 2.7% of passes thrown his way.
Again, surely a season to be extremely proud of and a near lock for Pro Bowl. But I don't think it's the best season a WR had in S27.
4. William Lim
Season Stats: 121 catches on 184 targets, 1838 receiving yards, 12 TD
As a member of the Sarasota Sailfish (bitter divisional rivals of the Yeti), if you want to claim anti-Yeti bias for ranking the leading WR in yards this low, you probably have some case. However, when looking at the advanced statistics I can't help feeling that like Barker before him, a lot of Lim's eye-popping numbers can be attributed to volume. The Yeti threw the ball over 700 times this season, and while Lim did rank in the top 10 of usage rate among WRs, almost any strong WR1 is going to put up really good numbers in that kind of offense.
Of course, Lim was not just any strong WR1 - he did come in 4th among WRs in yards per target, 5th in yards per passing play his team ran, 3rd in explosive catch rate, 7th in passer rating when targeted, and 3rd in passer rating over QB expectation. These are really really good numbers and I don't want to discount them solely because of volume. However, I genuinely think that the receivers above him on this list had even more impressive statistical resumes, even if they are hidden behind lower volume stats due to offensive environment.
3. Luca Scabbia
Season Stats: 89 catches on 125 targets, 1324 yards, 12 TD
Scabbia dropped the ball zero times in S27, on 125 targets. That is incredible, and a great way to start your WRotY case. On top of that, her efficiency metrics when targeted were among the best in the league. Scabbia was 2nd in yards per target and 1st in passer rating when targeted, meaning that she contributed a huge amount of value to her team's offense. And it wasn't solely because of good QB play, as Scabbia was also 4th in completion percentage and tied with Lim for 3rd in passer rating when comparing WR performance to QBs' expected numbers.
However, she falls slightly behind the top two of this list when looking at big play ability, ranking only 6th in yards per "route run" and 9th in explosive catch rate. Additionally, her volume stats seem just slightly beneath what is expected to win Wide Receiver of the Year.
2. Michael Witheblock
Season Stats: 109 catches on 149 targets, 1411 receiving yards, 11 TD
Witheblock was on a team that passed far less often than the Second Line or the Yeti, and yet he still managed to put up over 100 catches, 1400 receiving yards, and 10 TD. He did this by being an exceptionally reliable target for his quarterback - 1st in the league in catch rate at 73.2%. To accomplish that kind of catch rate while being the team's #1 receiver is simply incredible - if you look at the list above of top WRs by catch rate, it is dominated by teams' #2 and #3 options who had much easier matchups in coverage. He also ranked 3rd in completion percentage over QB expectation, so it isn't just that he was benefitting from an exceptionally accurate QB throwing the ball his way. And although he had a nonzero number of drops as opposed to Scabbia, being 3rd in the league in drop rate helps his case as well.
However, it's not just that he excelled at catching easy short yardage passes by any stretch of the imagination. Witheblock was 6th in the league in yards per target, 3rd in yards per "route run", 5th in explosive catch rate, and 4th in passer rating when targeted. To excel as a reliable pass catching option and to bolster that with big play ability and consistent yardage is an extremely potent combination.
1. Tychondrius Hood
Season Stats: 84 catches on 130 targets, 1502 receiving yards, 11 TD
To put it simply, Hood earned the top spot because he ranked 1st on the most lists of anyone out of this top group, and I think those lists fully demonstrate the value he provided to his team this year. He was 1st in the league in yards per target, with a full yard per target separating him from second place Scabbia. He was 1st in the league in explosive catch rate, with over one in six of his targets leading to a 20+ yard passing play. The next closest player to him was a full four percentage points worse in that metric. And he was 1st in the league in passer rating when targeted over QB expectation, with Monty Jack improving nearly 40 points on his nearly league-worst passer rating this season when throwing it Hood’s way.
In things that he wasn't ranked first in, he still did quite well - 4th in drop rate, 3rd in yards per "route run," 3rd in passer rating when targeted. He fell behind the pack in usage rate, recording just 23.5% of his team's passing targets, and catch rate, catching "only" 65% of balls thrown his way and only about 3% more than expected given his QB's average play. He dropped only 2 balls all season however, meaning this lower catch rate was likely more on the QB and on his offensive usage than on Hood’s ability in particular. However, despite this "unreliability," he delivered a huge number of big plays for his team and a lot of offensive value.
In my mind, Hood had the most impressive season of any WR in the league given his per-snap and per-target efficiency and the context of the offensive environment he operated in.
Honorable Mentions:
Taro Raimon
Season Stats: 89 catches on 144 targets, 1498 receiving yards, 10 TD
5th in first down rate, 3rd in yards per target, 7th in usage rate, 2nd in yards per "route run", 2nd in explosive catch rate. Very nice stats, but not quite enough in my mind to crack the top five without the absurd efficiency or volume stats as the other candidates.
Jed Podolak
Season Stats: 122 catches on 190 targets, 1578 receiving yards, 15 TD
To be honest I include Podolak mostly so people don't yell at me for not including him. Read everything I wrote about Barker/Lim's downsides, and then remove the awesome advanced stats they had, and you get Podolak. Honolulu, like Colorado, threw the ball over 700 times this season, and Podolak was targeted the most of any receiver in the league.
Still, he had the 6th best drop rate in the league, 6th highest usage rate, 8th highest yards per "route run", and 10th highest passer rating when targeted. Podolak still had quite a solid performance this season, and is surely worthy of an honorable mention here.
I hope you found this article useful and informative, especially if you have a vote for postseason awards! You can find the full statistics in this Google spreadsheet. Excited to see the discussion in the comments as always!
Yesterday, @mithrandir (one the ringleaders of the group) posted a super helpful spreadsheet of advanced stats. In this post, I will be diving through the data to understand who the best WR performers of Season 27 were. Let's get into it!
Reliability
One of the most important aspects of any receiver is their reliability. If a QB throws the ball their way, how much can they depend on the receiver making a positive play out of that pass attempt? To investigate this, I looked at a few measures. Below I'll briefly describe these measures, as well as show the top 10 WRs in each metric with some commentary.
Catch Rate
How many times did the receiver come down with a reception after getting targeted? This is obviously the most basic and important part of a wide receiver's job.
1. Michael Witheblock - 73.2%
2. Killian Chambers - 73.0%
3. William Alexander - 72.5%
T-4. Flash Panda - 71.7%
T-4. Adam Spencer - 71.7%
T-4. Mark Walker - 71.7%
7. Luca Scabbia - 71.2%
8. Raphael Delacour - 70.2%
9. Susan Cash Jr. - 70.0%
10. Kai Sakura - 69.7%
Drop Rate
Of passes thrown their way, how many did the receiver straight-up drop? While the result of a drop and a normal incompletion due to good coverage or an errant throw is the same, a drop is attributable for the most part directly to the receiver.
1. Luca Scabbia - 0.0% (!!!)
2. Sean O'Leary - 0.8%
3. Michael Witheblock - 1.3%
4. Tychondrius Hood - 1.5%
5. Thomas Passmann - 1.9%
T-6. Jed Podolak - 2.1%
T-6. Kai Sakura - 2.1%
T-6. Doug Howlett - 2.1%
T-9. Flash Panda - 2.2%
T-9. Leeroy Jenkins - 2.2%
First Down Rate
While the above two metrics look simply at whether the receiver could record a completion on a target, completing passes by itself isn't enough to win a football game. Teams depend on their receivers for chunk yardage to move the ball downfield and convert new sets of downs. First down rate looks at how many first downs the receiver was able to get on their plays divided by the number of times they caught the ball - how well did they convert their catches into useful offensive production?
1. Flash Panda - 63.6%
2. Kai Sakura - 60.6%
3. Mario Messi - 60.0%
4. Zach Crossley - 59.8%
5. Taro Raimon - 58.4%
6. Thomas Passmann - 57.6%
7. Sean O'Leary - 56.5%
T-8. William Lim - 54.5%
T-8. Darren Pama - 54.5%
10. Joshua Campbell / - 54.4%
Yards/Target
Similar to first down rate, yards/target is an attempt to quantify the ability to convert targets into offensive production, in this case receiving yards. While the yards/catch average listed in the index is interesting, it fails to account for all the 0-yard plays that happened because the receiver was targeted on an incompletion.
1. Tychondrius Hood - 11.6
2. Luca Scabbia - 10.6
3. Taro Raimon - 10.4
4. William Lim - 10.0
5. Mark Walker - 9.8
T-6. Flash Panda - 9.5
T-6. Ed Barker - 9.5
T-6. Michael Witheblock - 9.5
9. Joshua Campbell / - 9.1
10. Killian Chambers - 9.0
Opportunity
While reliability gives a sense of a receiver's efficiency on the targets they were given, the number of targets a receiver gets is often the result of their ability as well. A more competent receiver will often be able to work their way open for more targets, and although the mechanics of the sim may make this less true than in real football it's still an interesting metric to consider for awards.
Usage Rate
This statistic measures how many of a team's passing attempts went to a specific receiver over the course of the season. A higher usage rate belies a greater ability to give the QB a favorable throw or trust on the part of the team's offense to funnel targets towards them.
1. Jackson Kingston - 30.7%
2. Ed Barker - 29.9%
3. Michael Witheblock - 29.0%
4. Achtfünf - 28.0%
5. Videl-San - 27.6%
6. Jed Podolak - 26.8%
7. Taro Raimon - 26.4%
8. Tre'Darius J'Vathon - 26.3%
9. William Lim - 26.1%
10. Luca Scabbia - 24.41%
Yards per "Route Run"
This is one of the best metrics in real life football to look at receivers' ability to create yards by getting open. Unfortunately in the sim, it's very difficult if not impossible to come close to creating a count of "routes run" for each receiver, so what I have done to approximate this metric is just divide the receiver's yards by the number of passing plays the team run. For prominent receiving options, this should be basically equivalent since a high TPE WR will see the field on every offensive snap the team plays. We may miss some overperforming WR3's and such this way, but they're unlikely to be in awards contention anyway so I think it's an acceptable tradeoff.
1. Ed Barker - 2.64
2. Taro Raimon - 2.57
T-3. Tychondrius Hood - 2.52
T-3. Michael Witheblock - 2.52
5. William Lim - 2.44
6. Luca Scabbia - 2.39
7. Jackson Kingston - 2.28
8. Jed Podolak - 2.08
9. Flash Panda - 2.05
10. Tre'Darius J'Vathon - 2.00
Explosiveness
While players who can reliably catch the ball and convert first downs serve an important role for an offense, the best players are those who can change the game on a play-by-play basis by themselves. Breaking off explosive gains is one of the most exciting new aspects of the sim change to watch, and some players took exceptional advantage of this newfound ability this season.
Explosive Catch Rate
When the receiver was targeted, how likely were they to turn the play into a big gain of 20 yards or more (semi-arbitrary cutpoint decided by the sim's stat reporting)? In a sense, this measures just how game breaking the receiver was on a per-opportunity basis.
1. Tychondrius Hood - 18.5%
2. Taro Raimon - 13.9%
3. William Lim - 13.6%
4. Tre'Darius J'Vathon - 13.3%
5. Michael Witheblock - 12.8%
6. Joshua Campbell / - 12.6%
7. Darren Pama - 11.9%
8. Ed Barker - 11.4%
9. Luca Scabbia - 11.2%
10. Mark Walker - 11.0%
Passer Rating when Targeted
As passer rating is often treated as a go-to stat to encompass all of a QB's passing performance, why shouldn't we also use it for WRs? This uses the passer rating formula to determine what the QB's passer rating was only on throws that targeted the receiver in question. And yes, I did go through the index manually and tally the number of interceptions thrown on passes that targeted each receiver in the league to help generate this data.
1. Luca Scabbia - 130.9
2. Adam Spencer - 126.4
3. Tychondrius Hood - 122.7
4. Michael Witheblock - 118.7
5. Mark Walker - 116.5
6. Susan Cash Jr. - 115.9
7. William Lim - 113.5
8. Owen Holloway - 110.5
9. Ed Barker - 108.2
10. Jed Podolak - 105.5
QB-Independent Success
A QB obviously has a huge impact on their WRs' ability to produce. The receiver can only work with the balls that are thrown their way. To the extent possible, these next two metrics are a way to tease out how much of a receiver's production was a result of their individual talent rather than the QB throwing to them and the offensive environment they played within.
Completion Percentage over QB Expectation
To calculate this, I simply took the receiver's catch rate (receptions divided by targets) and subtracted from it their QB's completion percentage. This is thus a measure of how much more likely a pass was to be complete if their QB threw it at this specific receiver compared to anyone else on the team. Obviously this depends as well on the other teammates the receiver played with, but it can also be thought of as an indicator of how much value a receiver added to a team.
1. Susan Cash Jr. - +8.5%
2. Adam Spencer - +7.3%
3. Michael Witheblock - +7.1%
4. Luca Scabbia - +6.2%
5. Doug Howlett - +5.2%
T-6. William Alexander - +5.1%
T-6. Owen Holloway - +5.1%
8. Raphael Delacour - +4.8%
9. Cmon Skiuuup - +4.6%
10. Mark Walker - +4.5%
Passer Rating over QB Expectation
Combining the ideas behind the last metric and the last of the previous section, this measures how much a QB's passer rating "improved" when targeting a specific WR. It’s possible a WR had a not-as-great passer rating when thrown to due to problems with the QB play that they weren’t in control of, so this attempts to isolate their overall ability as measured by passer rating from the QB play they otherwise experienced.
1. Tychondrius Hood - +39.7
2. Susan Cash Jr. - +30.6
T-3. Luca Scabbia - +25.7
T-3. William Lim - +25.7
5. Adam Spencer - +22.5
6. Owen Holloway - +21.4
7. Michael Witheblock - +18.8
8. Mark Walker - +17.0
9. Doug Howlett - +14.7
10. Cmon Skiuuup - +12.9
Top 5 S27 Wide Receivers
Alright, let's get to the part with %controversy. I feel a need to preface this with a disclaimer that in my mind these top 5 are incredibly close. If these were presented to me on a ballot I would have a quite difficult time choosing between them. That said, I do think there's a fairly clear case for these 5 over any others (with the exception of a couple honorable mentions I'll get to at the end). So, here is how I personally would rank the top 5 WRs from S27 given the stats we discussed above.
5. Ed Barker
Season Stats: 111 catches on 185 targets, 1753 receiving yards, 13 TD
Listen, I told you this is an extremely strong group. Barker had an incredible year in the league and amassed the 2nd most yards and TDs of any receiver in the league. On top of that, he recorded a staggering 2.64 yards per passing play that the Second Line ran, clearly ahead of the rest of this group. He was a reliable target for his team and definitely played a large part in making their passing offense among the best in the league this season.
Although he was relied upon and targeted a huge number of times, his rate statistics were slightly below the rest of this group. He had the 9th highest passer rating when targeted, but this was actually the 2nd best on his team as his teammate Adam Spencer recorded the 2nd best in the league. This underscores the fact that he had a likely MVP QB throwing to him, and while he was surely a big part of his QB's performance as well that docks his performance a bit in my eyes. He only ranked around average for Passer Rating over QB Expectation, with +4.3. He caught only 60% of his targets (near the bottom of WRs with over 25 catches), and dropped 2.7% of passes thrown his way.
Again, surely a season to be extremely proud of and a near lock for Pro Bowl. But I don't think it's the best season a WR had in S27.
4. William Lim
Season Stats: 121 catches on 184 targets, 1838 receiving yards, 12 TD
As a member of the Sarasota Sailfish (bitter divisional rivals of the Yeti), if you want to claim anti-Yeti bias for ranking the leading WR in yards this low, you probably have some case. However, when looking at the advanced statistics I can't help feeling that like Barker before him, a lot of Lim's eye-popping numbers can be attributed to volume. The Yeti threw the ball over 700 times this season, and while Lim did rank in the top 10 of usage rate among WRs, almost any strong WR1 is going to put up really good numbers in that kind of offense.
Of course, Lim was not just any strong WR1 - he did come in 4th among WRs in yards per target, 5th in yards per passing play his team ran, 3rd in explosive catch rate, 7th in passer rating when targeted, and 3rd in passer rating over QB expectation. These are really really good numbers and I don't want to discount them solely because of volume. However, I genuinely think that the receivers above him on this list had even more impressive statistical resumes, even if they are hidden behind lower volume stats due to offensive environment.
3. Luca Scabbia
Season Stats: 89 catches on 125 targets, 1324 yards, 12 TD
Scabbia dropped the ball zero times in S27, on 125 targets. That is incredible, and a great way to start your WRotY case. On top of that, her efficiency metrics when targeted were among the best in the league. Scabbia was 2nd in yards per target and 1st in passer rating when targeted, meaning that she contributed a huge amount of value to her team's offense. And it wasn't solely because of good QB play, as Scabbia was also 4th in completion percentage and tied with Lim for 3rd in passer rating when comparing WR performance to QBs' expected numbers.
However, she falls slightly behind the top two of this list when looking at big play ability, ranking only 6th in yards per "route run" and 9th in explosive catch rate. Additionally, her volume stats seem just slightly beneath what is expected to win Wide Receiver of the Year.
2. Michael Witheblock
Season Stats: 109 catches on 149 targets, 1411 receiving yards, 11 TD
Witheblock was on a team that passed far less often than the Second Line or the Yeti, and yet he still managed to put up over 100 catches, 1400 receiving yards, and 10 TD. He did this by being an exceptionally reliable target for his quarterback - 1st in the league in catch rate at 73.2%. To accomplish that kind of catch rate while being the team's #1 receiver is simply incredible - if you look at the list above of top WRs by catch rate, it is dominated by teams' #2 and #3 options who had much easier matchups in coverage. He also ranked 3rd in completion percentage over QB expectation, so it isn't just that he was benefitting from an exceptionally accurate QB throwing the ball his way. And although he had a nonzero number of drops as opposed to Scabbia, being 3rd in the league in drop rate helps his case as well.
However, it's not just that he excelled at catching easy short yardage passes by any stretch of the imagination. Witheblock was 6th in the league in yards per target, 3rd in yards per "route run", 5th in explosive catch rate, and 4th in passer rating when targeted. To excel as a reliable pass catching option and to bolster that with big play ability and consistent yardage is an extremely potent combination.
1. Tychondrius Hood
Season Stats: 84 catches on 130 targets, 1502 receiving yards, 11 TD
To put it simply, Hood earned the top spot because he ranked 1st on the most lists of anyone out of this top group, and I think those lists fully demonstrate the value he provided to his team this year. He was 1st in the league in yards per target, with a full yard per target separating him from second place Scabbia. He was 1st in the league in explosive catch rate, with over one in six of his targets leading to a 20+ yard passing play. The next closest player to him was a full four percentage points worse in that metric. And he was 1st in the league in passer rating when targeted over QB expectation, with Monty Jack improving nearly 40 points on his nearly league-worst passer rating this season when throwing it Hood’s way.
In things that he wasn't ranked first in, he still did quite well - 4th in drop rate, 3rd in yards per "route run," 3rd in passer rating when targeted. He fell behind the pack in usage rate, recording just 23.5% of his team's passing targets, and catch rate, catching "only" 65% of balls thrown his way and only about 3% more than expected given his QB's average play. He dropped only 2 balls all season however, meaning this lower catch rate was likely more on the QB and on his offensive usage than on Hood’s ability in particular. However, despite this "unreliability," he delivered a huge number of big plays for his team and a lot of offensive value.
In my mind, Hood had the most impressive season of any WR in the league given his per-snap and per-target efficiency and the context of the offensive environment he operated in.
Honorable Mentions:
Taro Raimon
Season Stats: 89 catches on 144 targets, 1498 receiving yards, 10 TD
5th in first down rate, 3rd in yards per target, 7th in usage rate, 2nd in yards per "route run", 2nd in explosive catch rate. Very nice stats, but not quite enough in my mind to crack the top five without the absurd efficiency or volume stats as the other candidates.
Jed Podolak
Season Stats: 122 catches on 190 targets, 1578 receiving yards, 15 TD
To be honest I include Podolak mostly so people don't yell at me for not including him. Read everything I wrote about Barker/Lim's downsides, and then remove the awesome advanced stats they had, and you get Podolak. Honolulu, like Colorado, threw the ball over 700 times this season, and Podolak was targeted the most of any receiver in the league.
Still, he had the 6th best drop rate in the league, 6th highest usage rate, 8th highest yards per "route run", and 10th highest passer rating when targeted. Podolak still had quite a solid performance this season, and is surely worthy of an honorable mention here.
I hope you found this article useful and informative, especially if you have a vote for postseason awards! You can find the full statistics in this Google spreadsheet. Excited to see the discussion in the comments as always!