Volume vs. Efficiency
We are just a few weeks away from the NFL Player Draft. To help as you pour over potential prospects, here is the annual review of wide receiver performance measured by efficiency. The method that has been reported annually is based on something I call Return on Investment or ROI. A very popular receiver measurement is the Dominator Rating which has been a solid way to compare top receivers. Every team can only designate a single player as WR1 on the field at any one time so how do we find the complementary receivers who have the ability to play in the big league? ROI helps screen out players who might fly under the radar.
Before we get into what makes up ROI, let's take a look at Dominator Rating.
Dominator Rating
- Dominator Rating, or "DR" measures a player’s percentage of team receiving yards plus percentage of team receiving touchdowns.
- This concept was brought to the internet mainstream by the guys at Rotoviz.com.
- They admit the Dominator moniker is not a promise the player will dominate at the next level, but an apt description of how the player dominated his college team's passing game.
- A DR > 50% would suggest NFL superstar potential (top 10 draft pick) for a prospect, 40%-50% would suggest a player worthy of a top 20 pick, 35%-40% indicates late first round/early second, and so on.
Based on 2020-21 FBS stats provided by www.PFF.com, here is the Top DR list based on my calculations:
Yellow = Within 1 Standard Deviation above the Mean.
Green = Greater than 1 and less than 2 Standard Deviations above the Mean.
Purple = Greater than 3 Standard Deviations above the Mean.
In looking at evaluating receivers I feel DR is great at isolating potential NFL prospects for further review...but something didn't feel right. If a player was targeted more frequently, he could potentially gain the lion's share of results. Did that mean he was the best player on the field in the passing game? Maybe he was the guy because he it was his turn as a senior or maybe the coach just liked him or maybe he had the hype going into the season and running the passing game through him would keep the team on the news. And there were rarely diamonds in the rough to uncover with DR...the players were widely known because they were at the top of the stats columns. A guy could be responsible for 50% of his teams receiving yards and receiving TDs but maybe they were force feeding him and there were other, more efficient options available who were outside the limelight. But how would you find those guys?
Return on Investment
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 DR, 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 generated 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 minimize the impact of 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 used for player evaluation purposes.
ROI is NOT A PREDICTIVE METRIC. That is, the person at the top of the list should not be considered the best receiver in the college football - they would simply be the most efficient. ROI rankings are designed to help develop a list of players for further film review to see if they truly are a diamond in the rough.
Here is the 2020-21 list of high draft eligible ROI receivers by Z score (with corresponding Dominator Z Score) for the upcoming NFL Draft:
Tiers are distributed as above with the following additions:
Blue = Greater than 2 and less than 3 Standard Deviations above the Mean.
Orange = Greater than 1 Standard Deviation below the Mean.
Red = Greater than 1 and less than 2 Standard Deviations below the Mean.
Black = Greater than 2 Standard Deviations below the Mean.
- Top Dog - D'Wayne Eskridge was three times more productive than the average receiver in the final top 150 for the 2020-21 season (based on most yards). He had 36.6% of his teams targets, 44.7% of the Broncos receptions which he converted to 68.2% of their total yards.
- Best in Bama? - DeVonta Smith has the Heisman but when you look at efficiency, his teammate Jaylen Waddle comes out on top with Green Tier results.
- Not to put Smith's business out there, but if you venture down to the Orange Tier, you see The Crimson Tide got him 46.6% of the team's targets, 50.9% of their receptions but just 50.6% of team reception yards.
- Overlooked Bird - Fitzpatrick video is not hard to find since he is always showing out on Atwell tape. He's one of my favorite sleeper picks at WR this year.
- Out of Nowhere - There may be players with positive ROI but negative DR may be names you've never heard of. Good. That's the point of ROI, to give you names of players to study further.
- Players with above average ROI and DR:
- Eskridge
- Shi Smith
- Bailey Gaither
- Terrance Marshall
- Dez Fitzpatrick
- Ramaud Chiaokhiao-Bowman
- Tylan Wallace
- "Brand Name" Players with below average ROI and DR:
- Kadarius Toney
- Seth Williams
- Austin Watkins
- Rashod Bateman
- Tutu Atwell
Neither list guarantees success or failure but if these metrics help screen out players for further review of game videos it will help in our evaluations. Over recent years I've found some guys who have gone on to be solid contributors who I never would have found without using ROI...Kenny Golladay, Tim Patrick, Cooper Kupp, Josh Reynolds, Darnell Mooney, Scotty Miller and Keelan Cole (a DII prospect who absolutely dominated that subsection) are a few names.
Hoping this year's list has a few who will exceed our expectations.
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