Boombear's College Football Analysis: UPDATED!!! FBS and FCS WR Return on investment Through Regular Season

Top Efficiency Receivers for FBS and FCS!

Let's talk about the top-performing receivers in all NCAA divisions when it comes to efficiency based on Return on Investment. Raw volume statistics don't always indicate the ability of a receiver to manufacture production on his own, so Return on Investment provides context.

Return on Investment or "ROI" seeks to uncover just what the name implies...if I invest a passing target in getting the ball to a receiver, what kind of output in terms of production am I going to get from him? Starting with the basic concept of the Dominator Rating, the percentage of his team's receiving yards a player generates, ROI goes deeper, comparing also the percentage of his team's receptions the receiver converts from his targets.

The player's Return on Investment is compared to other players and, unlike DR, the players are tiered based on distribution using standard deviation; therefore, there is no fixed ranking scale. The number is absolute in that it tells us exactly how much more production a player generates from his opportunities compared to the average receiver.

As an efficiency measure, the impact of high volume receivers is eliminated because ROI is based on rates. However, to weed out one-dimensional deep threat players, only receivers with reception totals greater than 1 standard deviation below the mean are included (the "Sammy Coates rule").

Unlike DR, this metric ignores touchdowns because there are many factors contributing to a score that may not be directly influenced by the receiver (play design, downfield blocks, blown coverages, etc). Not that touchdowns are considered useless, as Reception to Touchdown ratio is also monitored in overall receiver evaluation.

ROI presented below under "Above Average" which shows how much more efficient a receiver is compared to the average Top 150 player in his division (in terms of receiving yards).

Get it? Got it? Good...

FBS

Here are the top 20 draft eligible receivers based on ROI efficiency:

Top Guns - Higgins and Terry continue to bogart the top two spots; if both stay in school, no doubt they would be the top two WRs in 2021.
Newcomers to list include:

Dubois from Virginia - He has been on the list before and showed out with < 50% of receptions yet accounting for about 50% of total yards in the ACC Championship loss.
Bradley from Louisiana may have a short stay on the list as his performance in the Sun Belt championship game provided about 20% of the receptions but < that rate for his reception yards.
Mack is a 6'5" 220 receiver who was a dual-threat QB who also handled kicking duties for his HS team. I'm not familiar with him but he went over 100 yards in 5 games (including vs. Memphis) and had 7 TDs this year so he will get a closer look.

Senioritis - There are only 7 seniors in the Top 20, the highest of which is Hightower of Boise State who faced off against senior Ward of Hawai'i in the Mountain West Championship game where Hightower's efficiency should get a nice boost with about 14% of receptions with around 29% of team reception yards. Ward had almost identical ratios.

FCS

Here are some of the top ROI receivers in FCS. We would expect to see extraordinary base production as well as excellent testing for you to see these players on Sundays in the future.

Weston has a pretty substantial margin of separation from his next competitor, Edwards of Maine; much larger than we've ever seen in monitoring ROI.

His ROI Efficiency is 308% above average for FCS receivers. JAC WR Keelan Cole was spotlighted here when he was 333% above average for DII in 2016 but the margin of separation was only about 67%; Weston is over 140% more efficient than the next guy and this is in a more competitive division than Cole (DII Kentucky Wesleyan).

With NFL size and a FCS division-leading TD rate of one every 4.1 receptions, this will be an interesting study. The feedback I've gotten about Weston from professionals and amateurs has been mixed so it will be especially interesting to watch Northern Iowa games and his pro day performance results.