
Now personally, I don’t give that a ton of weight, but you can be sure that Lions fans would point to that number if the statistics were reversed. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that Marshall had a huge edge in receiving touchdowns. Johnson may not have been the centerpiece of an elite offense, but he certainly was the main man in a better offense. The Lions ranked 16th in ANY/A, the Bears 26th Detroit also ranked 14th in NY/A, while the Bears finished 27th and in ’s Expected Points Added metric, the Lions passing attack ranked 13th, the Bears 24th. Additionally, the Lions passing offense was more efficient than the Bears passing offense. One, there are benefits associated with great over a larger number of pass attempts Detroit passed much more frequently, and being elite over a longer period of time (or for more plays/passes) is more valuable than being elite over a shorter period of time. That said, there are a couple of other factors that favor Johnson.
#Brandon marshall steve will do it how to#
Since receiving yards are so highly correlated with attempts, some adjustment needs to be made, and I plan on providing more analysis on how to grade wide receivers this off-season. I’m not convinced or even arguing that yards/attempt is the best way to rank receivers, but I do think the statistic represents an improvement on just receiving yards. Why can't we throw it like the Lions do?Īs it turns out, Calvin Johnson was neither the best Johnson nor the best receiver in his division, at least as measured by this metric. And while it is not relevant when discussing Marshall and Megatron, I have also included a Pro-rated Yards per Attempt column, which pro-rates the number of team attempts for the number of games played by the receiver (this helps Percy Harvin, of course). The table is sorted by yards per team passing attempt. The table below lists the number of team attempts for each wide receiver, his raw receiving statistics, and also his yards per attempt.

One thing we could look at is yards per team attempt. When one team throws 255 more passes than the other, I don’t think it’s appropriate to compare the receivers based on their raw receiving yards. The relevant situation here is that the Lions ran an incredible 1,160 plays compared to just 999 for the Bears, and Detroit attempted 740 passes while Chicago threw only 485 times. While Megatron racked up the numbers, I argued that you have to account for the situation.

Three weeks ago, I set forth the argument that perhaps Calvin Johnson was not even the most productive receiver in his own division.
