Brandon LaFell IS the Answer at Wide Receiver

[Housh]

(03-30-2017, 01:40 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: Yeah I'm not following this logic at all. If Andy Dalton throws to his receivers in this order...

AJ Green - 150 targets
Tyler Eifert- 110 targets
Brandon LaFell - 100 targets
Tyler Boyd - 80 targets
Gio Bernard - 65 targets

...Gio is indeed the 5th option in the pass game. What he does with the ball is irrelevant to where he is in the pecking order. Fwiw, I know you were just using Gio as an example, but WRs are almost always going to get more 1st downs than RBs.

Now I will say that it's always annoyed me that people look at "catch %" as a tribute or indictment of a receiver. If anything the catch % is more about the QB, as the "catch %" (a misleading term if there ever was one) is just the pass attempts and completions aimed at that receiver. If you take AJ Green and give him an inaccurate QB like Kaepernick, his catch % would suffer dearly. 

Also, catch % does not account for how shallow or deep the routes are. Naturally, shorter routes are completed more often. That's why RB's typically have a catch % north of 80%....while WR's typically sit somewhere around 55%. The term "catch %" should always be used in association with drops.

Ok I get what you were doing then

In my thinking I think that just because a guy is targeted a lot doesn't mean much.  So just because Lafells targets went up and he caught more passes because of his increased targets doesn't mean he played better. It just means he was the guy who basically HAD to increase production because a guy went down. That's why things like 1st downs and YPC appeal to me because that shows you what a guy did mattered.