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ShareThisChris Chambers = Eddie George?
Target stats --- that is, the number of times a particular receiver was the intended target of a pass --- are now widely available. But I've never been quite sure what to do with them. If two receivers have the same number of catches, but one of them was targeted much more often, which one is likely to have more catches in the future?
Occam would probably assume that the player with the lower number of targets --- and thus the higher catch percentage --- is probably the better player. After all, isn't that what receivers are supposed to do? Catch the balls that are thrown to them.
On the other hand, the player with more targets is in some sense a bigger part of the offense. Either he's open more often, or the quarterback is throwing in his direction even when he's not open. At least if he's staying in the same situation the following year, maybe some of those looks will turn into catches.
I have always suspected that neither of those explanations is in general correct, that while target numbers are probably relevant in certain cases, they aren't worth anything unless you have more information about the particular situation. But I'd never really studied it before.
So I took all pairs of consecutive wide receiver seasons since 2002/2003 in which the player played at least eight games in each season and had at least 30 receptions in the first season (there were 264 such). Then I ran a regression of Year N+1 receptions per game against Year N receptions per game and Year N targets per game. Here is the resulting equation:
Year N+1 rec =~ .64 + .63*(Year N rec) + .07*(Year N targets)
The coefficient on Year N targets is positive, but it's small, and not significantly different from zero in the "official" statistical sense. In other words, given the variation in the data, there is no real reason to assume the true coefficient on Year N targets isn't zero.
And again, it doesn't much matter whether it's statistically significant or not. It's too small to be very meaningful anyway. Last year, Chris Chambers had 3.7 catches per game on 9.7 targets per game. That's a ton of targets for someone with so few catches. Our formula predicts him to have about 3.6 catches per game next season. If he had had the same number of receptions, but a more typical amount of targets, say 6 per game, last season, then the formula would project him with 3.4 catches per game next year. That's a difference of only 3 catches over a 16-game season.
For what it's worth, I also included various age controls in the regression and it doesn't alter the conclusions.
Chambers' low catch percentage last season was not an aberration, which leads me to the title of the post. Is Chambers' consistently low catch percentage, like Eddie George's consistently low yards-per-rush average, a sign that he's not as good as he appears and that he's only compiling raw numbers because he has been given a ton of opportunities? Or is the fact that he has consistently been given a ton of opportunities despite the seemingly poor production a sign that he must be pretty good, because no competent coach would make him such a major focus unless he had some real talent.
I don't know how much this has to do with Chambers, but young running backs who get a ton of carries but have a low yards-per-rush average often turn into Hall of Famers. Here are the backs who had the most carries in their first three years despite a sub-4.0 average per carry:
Eddie George
Curtis Martin
Willis McGahee
Karim Abdul-Jabbar
Ricky Williams
Marshall Faulk
Jerome Bettis
Now there have been a lot of other young runners who failed to eclipse 4.0 yards per carry over their first three years. For example, Reggie Cobb, Antowain Smith, Johnny Johnson, and Leonard Russell. But those guys didn't get as many carries as Curtis Martin and Marshall Faulk did. I think that might say something. A low yards-per-rush is bad. But a ton of opportunities over a reasonably long period of time despite a low yards-per-rush might just be a signal.
In the same way, Chris Chambers' ability to remain a huge part of the offense through two entire coaching regimes (including several offensive coordinator switches) and numerous different quarterbacks, despite what appears on the surface to be sub par performance, might be a sign that he's better than we think he is.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2007 at 4:55 am and is filed under Fantasy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
"...might be a sign that he’s better than we think he is."
Or maybe just better than the other options that Miami has had - look at his competition.
I don't think you can really compare yards/rush and catch percentage like that, though.
The thing about yards/rush is that it's a heavily skewed distribution. No one rushes for negative 20 yards, but tons of RBs have lots of 20 yard runs.
With a heavily skewed distribution, the average yards/rush and the most-likely yards/rush (the mode) aren't going to be the same. In fact, the mode of the yards/rush distribution for the NFL is actually two yards. So long as a running back's yards/rush are over 2 yards, he could still be "better than the average running back." Without looking at the play-by-play data, you can't tell, though, as the NFL doesn't tabulate "most likely" rush.
Eddie George, Jerome Bettis, etc. were getting rushes because while they might not get long runs, they were still making more positive plays than an average RB.
Chris Chambers isn't. His yards/catch aren't anything special.
A few comments:
1. Instead of using pure targets, use the receiver's targets as a share of overall pass attempts. This would account for an offense's orientation (pass vs. run).
2. You might need additional controls to get meaningful data, such as QB completion%, QB sacks and/or "hurries." This might account for the situational variables. I'm thinking that certain situations are unfair to some types of receivers. Consider a QB chucking a high pass toward his receiver with the best 'vertical' down the sideline as he's about to be sacked.
3. You probably need to limit the sample to receivers who remained with the same team and QB in consecutive year-pairs.
4. Your idea is a great one. This is similar to the DIPS in baseball. Instead of Defense-Independent Pitching Stats, you could create a QB/Offense-Independent-Receiving Stat. The idea is to isolate and quantify the player's performance from the rest of his team's. I've been trying to do something analogous for QBs for a while but it's extremely difficult for a sport like football.
5. Regarding RB yards/carry: I believe median yards/carry would be a much better measure than using the average. The lucky breakaway run or 2 distorts averages too much.
To clarify, you mean that "Year N targets" does not help predict "Year N+1 receptions", above and beyond "Year N receptions"?
If you entered only "Year N targets" (and not "Year N receptions") into the regression, I'd be surprised if the weight was that close to 0.
"despite what appears on the surface to be sub par performance, might be a sign that he’s better than we think he is."
I think it's a sign that he's good at certain things, and very bad at others. For instance, I'd suspect he's very good (or at least much better than his teammates) at getting open, but bad at actually catching the ball once it is thrown to him. To qualify as a good receiver, he'd have to be at least average/mediocre at both, and good/great at one.
In fairness, I think a lot of the hidden value in the incompletions that are thrown to him comes from the fact that they aren't sacks. If he's open, and nobody else is, then the QB can just throw it to him and get a small chance of a positive gain, instead of giving up a sack and losing yards.
Coincidentally, the QB that threw the most passes for the Dolphins last year, Joey Harrington, is better at avoiding sacks than almost any other QB in the NFL, and is on the level of Manning and Favre in this category (unfortunately, he's only about as good as a typical backup at most other skills a QB needs, which is why he's currently a backup QB). This may be why Chambers had such a low catch percentage: Harrington saw the pass rush coming, nobody else was open, so he threw to Chambers, since a very low completion pass is still better than just throwing the ball out of bounds. And given the struggles of Miami's offensive line, and the fact that Miami was often trailing late in games (and had to pass a lot), this scenario would probably happen very frequently, magnifying the effect.
So, I guess my point is that Chambers' number of targets, and failure to catch them, probably indicates that he's good at getting open, and as a result, he's the recipient of a lot of hopeless pass attempts, so his mediocre catching ability is likely made to look even worse than it is. I don't think it points to Chris Chambers being a great receiver, though.
"Chris Chambers’ ability to remain a huge part of the offense through two entire coaching regimes (including several offensive coordinator switches)"
I would argue that the poor performance of the Miami offense is good reason to doubt that the coaches, and specifically the offensive coordinators, were good judges of talent/how to use that talent. It's hardly an endorsement of his ability that an incompetent coaching staff thinks he should be the focus of the offense (although it's no indictment of his ability, either). Also, the fact that a team that whose best QB last year was Joey Harrington passed on Brady Quinn in favor of a wide receiver makes me wonder if they think that highly of Chambers' talent. If they thought they had good receivers already, they probably wouldn't use a top ten pick on one when they had a glaring need and a highly regarded prospect at another position. Now, maybe they figured that they needed two really good receivers to have an efficient offense, and that Chambers was one of them, which would make sense, but I'm still skeptical.
The only Hall of Famer on that list is Faulk.
Martin, Bettis, and George should not get in. They were never, ever, dominant.
sn0mm1:
Curtis Martin was never dominant? Does that include his two 1,400+ season, one 1,500+ season, and one rushing title of 1,697? I'd say he had periods of dominance, even if he didn't get people's attention while dominating.
"Martin, Bettis, and George should not get in. They were never, ever, dominant."
Martin had 1697 yards and 12 TDs on 371 carries in 2004. That's 4.6 yards per carry, and he won the rushing title that year. How is that not dominant?! What does a player have to do to qualify as dominant?
And Eddie George is the only player to ever beat the Madden Curse, so that's got to count for something, no? Plus, he also beat the Heisman Curse. That's two Curses! That alone should get him some consideration.
As for Jerome Bettis, look at the top five leaders in all time rushing yards: Three Hall-of-Famers, Curtis Martin, and Jerome Bettis. And it's not like he never had a big season, in 1997 he had 1665 yards in only 15 games, and had 4.4 ypc. So I don't think letting him in the Hall would be such a travesty.
If you are dominant it means that you would choose that player as the RB on your team over all the other RBs in the league. Martin, Bettis, and George were consistently average. 1 season does not make a career nor does playing a long time make you a Hall of Famer. Bledsoe and Testaverde are similar to Bettis and Martin.
Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders, Marshall Faulk, Terrell Davis, Priest Holmes, Edge, Alexander, Tomlinson, etc. etc. all played at the same time as those 3 above and I would take all of those guys over Martin, Bettis, or George.
I disagree with sn0mm1s' take on Curtis Martin, but agree on the take for Jerome Bettis and to a lesser extent Eddie George. But Alex's pro-George reasoning is _very_ convincing
sn0mm1,
"If you are dominant it means that you would choose that player as the RB on your team over all the other RBs in the league."
You're saying that to be dominant, you have to be the best in the league. Besides that being subjective, it is very limiting. Does that mean Stephen Jackson (who led the league in yards from scrimmage) wasn't dominant because most people would take Tomlinson? There can be more than one dominant player at each position at a given time.
The players you list were frequently contemporaries of each other. Does that mean that in any given year, only one of them was dominant? I think Sanders and Smith were dominant in the same years--so was Thurman Thomas (who led the league in yards from scrimmage four straight times).
I have a hard time saying that somebody who once LED THE LEAGUE IN RUSHING YARDS wasn't dominant.
Having 1 good season doesn't make a Hall of Fame CAREER. In 11 seasons Martin never led the league in TDs, he never led the league in yards from scrimmage, he led the league in rushing once but he also led the league in carries... if you lead the league in carries you are SUPPOSED to lead them in rushing.
Who would you rather have:
Barry or Martin?
Smith or Martin?
Faulk or Martin?
Tomlinson or Martin?
Davis or Martin?
Edge or Martin?
If you aren't in the elite group of your own peers how can you be in the elite group of the best ever to play the game?
Not a Chambers fan, but low efficiency isn't all on him. The problem with using target stats to judge a player, like footballoutsiders using their DVOA to show Chambers as the worst WR in the leauge in 2006, is that they completely neglect QB play. While a guy may be targeted on a pass, that doesn't tell me if the QB threw it 10 yards over his head.
In arguing about Wes Welker vs. Chris Chambers with stubborn Patriot fans, I found that the Miami QB's were able to throw more accurate passes to Welker than they did to Chambers last season. Reasoning probably is Welker was a #3 WR, played in the slot and caught a lot of short, wide open passes. Chambers faces the #1 CB every week and is used more on vertical routes that the likes of Joey Harrington just can't throw with any accuracy. The numbers are pretty staggering.
Chambers - 76 of his 154 targets (49.4%) were uncatchable balls
Welker - 25 of his 100 targets (25%) were uncatchable balls
Also the comparison favors Marty Booker, arguably Miami's best WR in 2006
Booker - 23 of his 90 targets (25.6%) were uncatchable balls
Uncatchable is defined as passes overthrown, thrown away intentionally, underthrown, thrown wide, defensed, and caught out of bounds.
If Beck becomes the real deal at QB for Miami and Chambers still struggles, then there might be proof he's a bad #1 WR. But let the guy get a decent QB for a change.
Anyone who compares Curtis Martin to Vinny Testaverde deserves to be ignored by society for the rest of their life.