Five Years in the Making
Five years ago, I wondered. Is there a better way to evaluate college football receivers given the spectrum of college schemes and systems? That wondering led to action which led to Receiver Return on Investment (R.O.I.). When I rolled onto the "DraftTwitter" scene, I found Dominator Rating was the main predicter of performance (and, to a lessor extent, Breakout Age"). So, armed with spreadsheets and curiosity, I started the turning over the numbers and, five years later, the method is still in development as it will likely be until I get distracted by something else- let's be honest, in sports analytics, is a process ever "complete"? I sure hope not.
Return on Investment
- Looking at raw statistics are the first screening process for evaluating wide receiver prospects based on production.
- Dominator Rating looks at a player's production (yards and touchdown) and tries to project success at the next level based on percentage "market share".
- While it makes sense that players with a large market share could continue to produce at the next level, how do you find the "diamonds in the rough" players who are totally overlooked by market share? How do you find the guys who didn't monopolize market share but got more out of each of their opportunities?
- Five years ago I started looking at the relationship between market share of targets, receptions and yards and ranking players based on their progressive improvement of these statistics. In the end, I came up with Return on Investment (ROI) as a way to gauge how much extra production a receiver provides his team compared to the averages of the Top 150 receivers.
Past ROI Receivers
Here are some of the largely unheralded draft prospects screened out as solid ROI guys.
- 2016
- Rashard Higgins - 5th round pick has been a contributor in CLE since being drafted with career YPR of 13.6.
- 2017
- Josh Reynolds - 4th round pick has established himself as WR3 with LAR.
- Tim Patrick - Undrafted and waived by BAL and SF, he has drawn attention as a leading WR on a team deep at that position. On 67% of offensive snaps he averaged 14.3 YPT over his last 3 seasons.
- Cooper Kupp - 3rd round pick out of Eastern Washington has earned a $47M extension by generating over 1,000 yards in 2019; he was on pace to generate 1,000 yards in 2018 and is on pace to do so in 2020.
- Kenny Golladay - 4th round pick came out of nowhere to be the WR1 at Northern Illinois, then emerged as WR1 for DET. Back to back 1,000 yard seasons in 2018 and 2019.
- 2018
- Trent Sherfield - Undrafted pick up by ARI, he has been a solid contributor for the team with > 25% of offensive snaps and > 43% of special team snaps each of the past 2 seasons.
- Cedrick Wilson - 6th round pick from Boise State is on a team with stud WRs an still posts the teams highest Yards per Snap ratio of 1.35 through Week 7 (Lamb is 1.30, Cooper 1.19 and Gallup 0.80) so when he is on the field, the QB is looking his way. If he and Lamb develop, it might make it easier to release Cooper and his huge contract in 2022.
- Tre'Quan Smith - 3rd round pick had done all the team has asked him to do coming in for no less than 43% of offensive snaps in his career, coming in at 82% this season to fill in for an injured Michael Thomas.
- 2019
- Scotty Miller - A 6th round pick from Bowling Green, Miller has found himself an integral part of the TB offense due to injury and he's making the best of it currently 32nd in receiving yards.
- Olabisi Johnson - Obtained for what some consider throw away pick territory in the 7th round, the Colorado State paid for himself in 2019 alone providing the team flexibility by being on the field for 53% of offensive snaps which is an outstanding value for his draft position. Although his WR3 spot was taken over by 1st round pick Jefferson, he continues to contribute (> 25% of Offensive and ST snaps).
- Travis Fulgham - The Old Dominion product went in the 6th round and has emerged as the leading receiver on PHI so far this year. Who knew? ROI knew.
- 2020
- Darnell Mooney - The 5th rounder out of Tulane was the number 2 in ROI for 2019 but it seems a scheme change threw his 2020 season out of whack. CHI's scouts must be a fan of this blog because who else had him on the radar after a down year in 2019?
- Most other rookies are still getting their feet wet but you can check out the full list here.
Kicking off the 2020 Season
I'm sure we are all ready for 2020 to move on but we have college football back as a welcome distraction. Usually we have the first ROI table after the 3rd week of play but with all conferences at different point in the season now is as good a time as any.
 |
| Shaded = Not Draft Eligible The table above is sorted by ROI Z score with everyone on the list with ROI greater than 1 standard deviation from the mean. The DOM and Dom Z are related to the Dominator rating. Rec% and Yard% is the percentage of team receptions and yards, respectively. Dominator Rating |
The table above is sorted by Dominator Rating. Here you see more of the household names. The last column lists ROI efficiency so while David Bell is responsible for over 58% of Purdue's receiving production ROI indicates he is not making the most of his opportunities.
By contrast, Josh Palmer and Romeo Doub's have high Dominator Ratings and ROI.
Check this spot for ongoing updatesnon a weekly basis.
*********************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment