FanPost

WR Prospect Criteria and Weighting

With the offseason in full swing and with so much talk about the WR position, like a lot of you, I have been looking at a lot of draft prospects for the Bills lately. Personally, I think the best assessment is done by using film, but then using data to level-set the prospects or support what is on film. I also try not to sway my opinions on the "group think" that is out there on draftnik websites. As a a result, I prefer to make the assessment myself. I use full-game, all-snaps film of a prospect. I try not to look at games where the opposing talent level is low. Everyone looks great against inferior competition (e.g. Alabama vs Sam Houston St). I avoid highlight reels because everyone's highlight reel looks great and everyone's lowlight reel looks bad.

While watching film, taking notes, and crunching stats is fun and interesting, it is not worth much if you don't have a way to translate that data to compare each prospect and come up with a ranking. This has been my dilemma lately. As a result, I have been trying to come up with a set of criteria and weighting in order to make my assessment more consistent and end with a way to rank the prospects. The first step is determining the Criteria. 2nd Step is to assign a weighting to the criteria and assessment.

Criteria:

Criteria#1:

For me, the #1 criteria for a receiver is reliable hands. This is especially true for the Bills. They have a young QB that is learning and has a reputation for being inaccurate, so it is important to get receivers that are reliable. Contrary to that thought, the Bills have a recent history of drafting players that really struggle to catch the ball. Zay Jones and Dawson Knox are the two most prominent examples. I hope Knox improves, but it is undeniable that his hands are a mess. Last year was an overall offensive improvement on 2018, but even so, the 2019 Bills WRs struggled to catch the ball, specifically they struggled to catch uncontested catchable balls. Their collective Uncontested True Catch Rate was 78% compared to an NFL average of 91%. Conversely, they were exactly at the NFL league average for contested catches (45%). To put this into perspective how bad it was, if the Bills WRs caught catchable uncontested balls at just the league average, then Josh's completion % would have been 66% and if you assume that each extra completion was for 11.4 yds (Josh's average), then he would have had 3482 total yards. Those are pretty decent stats if the WRs and TEs were just average at catching the ball!

Let me repeat that... Josh would have had 66% Completion % and 3482 yards if the WRs and TEs were just AVERAGE AT CATCHING THE BALL! As great as that would have been, who knows how many more drives would not have stalled or how many extra touchdowns we would have had. Oh well... moving forward...

Criteria #2:

After reliably catching the ball, my #2 criteria is speed. This was not always the case. Just a couple of weeks back, I posted my WR criteria on BR and at that time, it was in this order.... hands, route technique, speed, physicality, and height.

The more that I have dug into the analysis, speed is now my clear #2. The data is over-whelming...

For the top 32 NFL WRs in yards (some people's definition for WR1) in 2019:

  • only 3 (9%) had a 40 time greater than 4.60
  • only 11 (34%) had a 40 time greater than 4.55
  • The average 40 time for this group was 4.49

For the top 32 NFL WRs in yards with over 50% of their snaps on the outside (X-position or Y-position -€” another definition of WR1) in 2019:

  • 0 (0%) had a 40 time greater than 4.60
  • only 5 (15%) had a 40 time greater than 4.55. All but 1 (Mike Williams -€” 4.59) had a 40 time of 4.57 or better
  • The average 40 time for this group was 4.47

For the top 64 NFL WRs in yards (some people's definition for WR1/WR2) in 2019:

  • only 4 (6%) had a 40 time greater than 4.60 and all of those 4 had over 50% of their snaps in the slot
  • only 11 (17%) had a 40 time greater than 4.55
  • The average 40 time for this group was 4.48

As a result of this analysis I think this week's combine will be a big for a lot of receivers.

To that point, there is a large group of really solid prospects in this year's draft that have only so-so speed projections. For the most part, these WRs are sure-handed, over-achieving, tall, physical, high-effort players. Historically, I love these traits in a prospect. I even find myself rooting for them. I am big underdog rooter, so I gravitate to this kind of prospect. But the one thing that they seem to be missing is great speed. The Bills have had several of these guys over the years: Duke Williams, David Sills, Nick Easley, Brandon Reilly, Cam Phillips, etc.... They are all fan favorites.

Here is the list of this year's prospect that could be added to that list:

  • Antonio Gandy-Golden
  • Michael Pittman
  • Tyler Johnson
  • Gabriel Davis
  • Chase Clayborn
  • Collin Johnson
  • CeeDee Lamb (yes. Many have questioned his speed. I have seen predictions as slow as 4.6)
  • Bryan Edwards
  • Donovan Peoples-Jones
  • Tee Higgins

There is barely a bad thing to say about any of these prospects except for the question of speed. With the combine starting today, some of the question marks will be changed to a thumbs up or a thumbs down. For me, I would not draft a guy with a 40 greater than or equal to 4.6. Ideally, I would be looking for a guy with better than 4.5 speed.

If the answer is thumbs down, then I believe it will be really hard to find a role for the sure-handed, over-achieving, high-effort, but not top athleticism receiver on an NFL team. The only way that a prospect like this can truly succeed is if they are in a scheme that creates opportunities using angles and space from the slot. An example of this is the TD that Duke had earlier this year. The slot position allowed him to be matched up against an LB or a S. The angle of the slant gave him the natural separation and allowed him to shield the ball with his big body. This was basically a TE route. But i digress....

The rest of the criteria is important too, but reliable hands and speed are the clear leaders for me. Here's how I group the criteria.

Reliable Hands:

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Route Technique:

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Measurables:

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Other Criteria:

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Criteria Weighting:

This is the part that I am still experimenting with. I haven't settled on the weighting, but what I have settled on is that I want a different set of weighting based on the different types of WR positions. Each position has a different set of traits that impact success in that role. The positions that I am assessing are...

  • Traditional Y-position receiver (mostly fly routes and curl routes)
  • Traditional X-position receiver (similar to the Y-position, but a more diverse route tree)
  • Traditional Z-position/slot receiver (shorter quicker routes, requiring more quickness than speed)
  • Flood / Multiple receiver (diverse route tree -€” long, short, horizontal, and vertical, needs more speed and agility over technique due to routes that work in space)

So, if you add all of this up, the here is where I am with weighting the criteria...

Reliable Hands:

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All of the positions care about reliable hands, but in general, the slot position cares less about catch-radius and more about uncontested catches.

Route Technique:

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As you can see, the Y-position is more heavily weighted towards vertical routes, while the Y-position cares more about Horizontal routes.

Measurables:

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Not surprisingly, the slot position cares more about agility than long speed. The Flood/ Multiple role cares about all traits because in a flood scheme, all WRs are moved around to multiple positions with multiple routes.

Other Criteria:

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These are some lesser traits. They are still worthy of consideration, but the weighting is much lower. "Achievement Above Support/Scheme" and "Achievement above Competition" are used to level-set the players that may look much better than they really are due to being on great teams with WR-friendly schemes. As an example, if the team is loaded with talent, then defense may be forced to play zone against the team which creates more space and a softer defense to get separation. It also considers the competition that a player may be going up against. As an example, if the top WR on a team is lined up in the slot all of the time, then it is likely that they look better than they really are because they will be covered by a LB, a safety, or a 3rd CB.

Right now, this is how I see it. Currently if you sum up the 3 "Hands" weighting + the "speed" weighting, it is 53 points out of 104. They are just over half of the weighting. I may consider bumping this up.

Assessment Weighting:

Now for each player I give them an assessment for each trait based on the film and/or the measurables. I think this is fairly straight-forward.

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Sum It All Up!

I know that this was probably too much information, but hopefully it helps you understand why I care so much about reliable hands and speed. After the combine, I will post the prospects that I reviewed. Each of them will have a rating for each of the 4 WR positions.


Just another great fan opinion shared on the pages of BuffaloRumblings.com.