WR/TE Stat Analysis: Catch Rate and Drawn Pass Interference

July 28, 2020

Antonio Losada looks at catch rate and defensive pass interference (DPI) as stats to consider when analyzing players at the wide receiver and tight end positions leading up to the 2020 fantasy football draft season.

When it comes to drafting stud wide receivers and tight ends, we all pursue the same stats: receptions, yards, and touchdowns. It makes sense. Those three stats are the ones that ultimately yield actual, tangible fantasy points in every fantasy league, no matter the format. The savviest fantasy GMs often focus on targets, as without targets, receivers have no chance to score points. That's a good approach to assess a very important non-fantasy stat. But targets are not the only non-fantasy number worth considering.

There are plenty of "artificially-built" numbers that help us understand football and player performance better, like yards per reception, yards per target, and others like fantasy points per target that do the same thing only with a fantasy twist. Today, I'm here two explore two stats that usually go under the radar when analyzing receivers and tight ends. Some already take the first one (catch rate) into consideration, but the other (drawn pass interferences) might surprise you if you have never thought of its impact on the game.

That's why today I'm writing about the leaders in both statistical categories during the past 2019 season with our eyes already set on the upcoming 2020 one. Let's explore what the best players at the WR/TE position did when it came to catching rates and drawn pass interference.

Best 2019 Catch Rates - WR & TE

In order to limit the data to only fantasy-relevant players, I've only considered WRs and TEs to reach 150+ PPR points during the 2019 season. There are 51 of them in the chart above, all with catch rates between 51% (Curtis Samuel) and 81% (Michael Thomas). I have highlighted the players to catch more than 65% of their targets.

The first insight we can get is that among tight ends to meet the criteria (150+ PPR), only six caught more than 65% of their targets. Travis Kelce finished with the highest PPR on the season (249) while boasting a 71% catch rate on 136 targets over the year. That percentage is far from the highest in the group (George Kittle, 79%) although it must be said that Kelce was the most-targeted TE of the year. While both Tyler Higbee (78%) and Austin Hooper (77%) finished inside the top-three in catch rate, they did so while getting targeted fewer than 100 times (89 and 97 targets respectively). Darren Waller, who also made the top-three (two-way tie at the third spot, 77% catch rate) reached that mark on a much higher volume with 117 targets in 2019.

Moving on to wide receivers, Michael Thomas was on a league of his own. His impossible 81% catch rate was six percentage points higher than the second-best from another WR (Tyler Lockett, 75%), the same difference as between Lockett (second) and the seventh-best WRs (DeAndre Hopkins and Larry Fitzgerald, 69%). Only six receivers were able to catch at least 70% of their targets, and just five of them did so on at least 100 targets. The same happens if we lower the threshold on both metrics: While 18 WRs reached catch rates of 65%+, only 11 of them were able to sustain those percentages on 100+ targets over the year.

All things considered (targets and catch rate, that is), the top-five most efficient players at both the WR and TE positions were, in order:

• WR Michael Thomas (185 targets, 81% catch rate)
• TE George Kittle (107, 79%)
• TE Darren Waller (117, 77%)
• WR Tyler Lockett (148, 61%)
• TE Austin Hooper (97, 77%)
• WR Keenan Allen (154, 64%)
• TE Tyler Higbee (89, 78%)
• TE Travis Kelce (136, 71%)
• WR DeAndre Hopkins (150, 69%)
• WR Cooper Kupp (134, 70%)

Worst 2019 Catch Rates - WRs & TEs

Let's move to the left side of the chart now, which contains the worst players in terms of catch rate. Highlighting those with a catch rate at or below 60%, as you can see, no tight end made the cut (while still racking up at least 150 PPR over the year). Mark Andrews had the worst rate at 65%, way above the cutoff.

Among the wide receivers included in the group to meet those marks (14 of them), the "best" was Jarvis Landry at 60%, though he was able to sustain that percentage over the largest number of targets with 138. Curtis Samuel (105), in comparison, was targeted more than 100 times but could only catch 51% of the passes thrown his way, almost ten percentage points below Landry's mark. No wonder who finished higher in the PPR ranks...

Taking both catch rate and targets into account, these were the five least-efficient WRs from the 2019 season:

• WR Chris Conley (90 targets, 52% catch rate)
• WR Curtis Samuel (105, 51%)
• WR Mike Williams (90, 54%)
• WR Robby Anderson (96, 54%)
• WR Darius Slayton (84, 57%)

This doesn't mean those players can be simply labeled as bad fantasy players. All of them fit the "deep threat" profile (which often makes for harder-to-catch targets), and in fact, four of them (all but Curtis Samuel) racked up 740+ yards on the year including Mike Williams and his 1,001 yards over the full season (with the only problem that he just scored a couple of touchdowns).

2019 Pass Interferences Drawn  - WRs

In order to keep things simple when it comes to Drawn Pass Interferences, I have just limited the data to players with at least five DPI and 150+ PPR points in 2019, which yielded only eight results. All of them are included in the chart above, and as you see no tight end made the cut (three tight ends finished at the top of the position leaderboard in DPI with two over the year: Travis Kelce, Darren Waller, and George Kittle).

Among the highlighted wide receivers, the results varied wildly. The three of them able to rack up the most DPI (eight) ranged from 150 yards gained through drawing those penalties (Courtland Sutton) to just 85 (Odell Beckham) with Mike Evans in the middle (139 yards). Big-body receivers such as Sutton and Evans are prone to generate those penalties and it showed last year, and while Beckham doesn't have the frame of those two and gained fewer yards, his outcome there was reasonably good.

Again, being a big wide receiver doesn't mean smaller wideouts can't draw these penalties: look at Mike Williams and his 64 yards on five DPI, or Christian Kirk who led the group in yards per DPI with an incredible 22.2 mark.

Although not included in the plot as they had fewer than five DPI over the year, if we lower the threshold to at least two DPI during the season (that expands the field to 31 players, including the aforementioned three tight ends), here is the leaderboard in Yds/DPI:

• WR Curtis Samuel (31.3 Yds/DPI on 3 DPI)
• WR Calvin Ridley (27.7 on 3)
• WR Tyler Lockett (26.0 on 2)
• WR Julio Jones (23.5 on 2)
• WR Christian Kirk (22.2 on 5)
• [...]
• TE Darren Waller (17.0 on 2)
• [...]
• TE Travis Kelce (15.5 on 2)
• [...]
• TE George Kittle (3.5 on 2)

We could have expected the leaderboard to read as it does: Fast receivers and big-bodied ones at the top, with the tight ends mostly trailing all players as they are not often used in plays that can lead to DPI penalties (yet when they do, the sheer frame of those players make for easy calls against the defense).

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