On the other hand, if one person had 1200 yards on 120 targets, and another had 1200 yards on 150 targets, then all other things being equal, clearly the first WR had a better season- if for no other reason than that he "wasted" fewer offensive plays in acquiring his stats.
Well, if all other things are equal, then we can assume that both players played in the same number of games and played in the same number of passing snaps. And if that's the case, I don't agree with you. I think the second receiver was probably the better player; on 150 plays, he at least got open. A target without a reception isn't a "wasted" offensive play any more than a play without a target. If a receiver doesn't get open on a bunch of plays, he's not helping his team at all. If you get open all the time, you're going to get more targets. If you don't get open all the time, QBs might only throw to you when you're wide open, inflating your per target numbers.The bottom line for me is that, more often than not, a target is a good thing. It means you're doing something right. Obviously we're talking "on average" here -- it doesn't always mean you're doing something right. Additionally, if you only have 90 targets on the season, absent something crazy, you probably aren't an elite receiver.
We're talking about different things. You say that the player who produced with more targets is probably the better player. I'm saying that the player who produced with fewer targets had the better season. The two statements are not mutually exclusive.Let's say that you knew ahead of time that a QB was going to throw the ball 500 times. If he had the first receiver on his team, then he'd already have 1200 yards with 380 passes left to distribute. If he had the second receiver, he'd have the same 1200 yards... but he'd only have 350 passes left to distribute. Assuming both receivers resulted in the same number of first downs, touchdowns, etc... I'd say it's pretty clear that the first receiver did more to help the offense. He had a better season.
Now, you're also right that the fact that receiver2 was targeted 150 times is telling. It suggests that he's probably a fantastic talent, because more often than not you don't get target totals like that without being an elite receiver (Chris Chambers notwithstanding). Still, while he may be a great talent, he did not help the offense as much as Receiver1 did, whether Receiver1 was a lesser talent or not.
Look at Chris Chambers again. Over the 2005-2006 seasons, Chambers had a whopping 310 targets (and 20 more rushing attempts, for good measure). Of course, he caught substantially less than 50% of them, killed countless drives, and basically just held the offense back. The fact that he got those target totals indicate that he was the most talented WR on the entire team (or, at least, the QB and the coaches thought he was)... but that doesn't mean he had the best season of any WR on the team. In fact, I strongly believe that Miami's offense would have been substantially better if they'd just stopped throwing to Chris Chambers so dang much.
Basically, what it boils down to is this- if all factors except for targets were held constant, would you prefer a WR with a low yard per target value, or a high yard per target value? Looked at through that prism, I don't think there's any way you could categorically say that lower ypt receivers beat higher ypt receivers. I mean, taking that train of thought to its logical extreme, the best receiver in history would be one that got 100 targets and only got 10 receiving yards out of them. I can understand viewing ypt as a neutral stat, or I could see using it as a "minimum threshold" type stat (i.e. once a receiver reaches a minimum threshold, ypt becomes a neutral stat, but below that threshold it serves as a negative indicator).
I just can't understand establishing a straight up inverse relationship between YPT and WR quality.
In fact, I generally use both targets and ypt as a "minimum threshold" type stat. If you had under 100 targets, I don't really care what your ypt was, because you were a role player- all ypt tells is us how well suited you were for that particular role, it doesn't tell us anything about how well you'd do in an increased role (see: Henderson, Devery). If you had under, let's say, 6 ypt, then I don't really care what your target total was, because you were a hindrance to the offense- all targets tell us is whether you hurt the offense a little bit, or whether you hurt it a lot (see: Chambers, Chris). Provided a player meets both minimum thresholds (at least 100 targets and at least 6 ypt), then I think you've got a decent apples-to-apples comparison on your hands. Obviously I'm just throwing random "for instance" numbers out there for the minimum threshold- there would be much better, much more scientific methods to establish some reasonable minimum thresholds- but I think the concept is solid. Provided both receivers topped the minimum target threshold, ypt is a good way to differentiate between the two of them. Provided both receivers topped the minimum ypt threshold, total targets is a good way to differentiate between the two of them.
Of course, then at the end of the day you have to account for supporting cast and strength of schedule somehow, too. Obviously measuring football players strictly through the prism of statistics is very complicated and filled with tons of potential landmines, which is why I always toss around my favorite phrase- I don't use statistics to form my opinions, I use them to inform my opinions. I would never look at some statistical ranking and draw some sweeping conclusions from it. If Santonio Holmes has a better ypt than Hines Ward, for instance, I wouldn't take that to mean that Holmes was better. If Ward had more targets, I wouldn't take that to mean that Ward was better. If I created some sort of "receiver quality" stat that was an amalgamation of every single stat I could get my hands on, I still wouldn't take that stat as gospel. If, however, that stat was telling me that I might be underrating a particular receiver, I would make a point of watching that receiver play a bit and trying to identify just why, exactly, my perceptions differed so much from what the stat was telling me. Sometimes I watch a guy and find out I was wrong about him- statistics are a great tool to bring a guy to my attention who I otherwise might not have given a second thought to. Other times I watch the guy and just feel like the statistic is dramatically overrating him. Either way, while the statistics do play a big part in the conclusions that I draw, I would never just take the statistic and substitute it directly for my conclusions. Maybe stats will be there someday, but as of today, there's no stat that's a substitute for the human ability to evaluate. A supplement, yes. A substitute, no.
