It's really been an odd year for him. I don't think it's as bad as AJ and fantasy owners feel like it is. It's just been one thing or another.
The Eagles have played 9 games.
Brown was out for 1 game.
Of the other 8 games, he was only targeted 1-3 times in 2 of the games.
In all the other 6 games, he's been heavily targeted.
Of those, in 1 game he could hardly catch anything (from what I heard they were not good passes).
Of the other 5 games, 2 of those games he had low yard per reception and no touchdowns (and you're not getting anywhere when those two things are true).
In the other 3 games, he was fine. 23, 14, and 28 PPR points.
So all you can do is ask yourself if those various factors holding him back are going to continue or if they've just been weird, unrelated anomalies making it look like a terrible season.
A 57% catchable ball rate on the season is absolute garbage and dramatically skews the target data
This is a bit of a misleading stat that unscrupulous sports writers use without context to drive a narrative/agenda that they've already decided on.
Catchable ball rate
AJ Brown: 57%
Davante Adams: 58%
Devonta Smith: 79%
Puka Nacua: 84%
So why are the catchable ball rates between AJB/DeVonta so different when they have the same QB throwing to them? Why is it so different between Puka/Adams when they have the same QB throwing to them?
Separation
AJ Brown: 1.8
Davante Adams: 2.1
Puka Nacua: 2.9
Devonta Smith: 3.1
Catchable ball rate tends to roughly scale with separation. It's not perfect, but in general the guys at the top in separation have very high catchable ball rates, while guys at the bottom in separation have very low catchable rates. Tre Tucker hasn't had good QB play this year, but his catchable ball rate is 80%, because he's at the top of the league in separation. Mike Evans has a catchable ball rate of 54% while Tez Johnson is 75%, again with the same QB as each other.
Logically it makes sense too. If a guy is wide open you know you just need to generally put it on them, and not miss badly. If a guy is more covered you need to thread it into the perfect spot away from the defender where only your guy can catch it, which means you have a much smaller window and are much more likely to miss entirely. Also, I believe if a defender swats a ball down it is considered not catchable, which obviously happens a lot more often when a WR has less separation.
Part of this is not AJB's fault but rather the nature of the positions they play. Shifty small WRs that make their living on their quickness generally have higher separation, so higher catchable target rates. Traditional X receivers typically have lower separation, and lower catchable target rates.
Though on that same front, AJB's separation numbers are down this year even for him as a traditional X receiver. The lowest of his career. Whether it's age or injuries catching up to him or attitude, he looks slower than ever out there. If his targets are decreasing, it's probably his fault too. Not only underperformance and the bad look of complaining on a 7-2 team, but also publicly alienating the franchise QB that is much more important to the team than him is not smart. Whether consciously or subconsciously of course that is going to make that QB want to look at the guy across the field more often, especially when the guy across the field is doing a lot more with his targets.
And for all of the talk about the offense underperforming when AJB doesn't get enough looks
based only on the most recent 1 game...
Eagles PPG when AJB has 5+ catches:
21.75
Eagles PPG when AJB has fewer than 5 catches:
26.2
Eagles PPG when AJB has the most WR targets:
24
Eagles PPG when DeVonta has the most WR targets:
29
One of the most respected players on the team would be one of a large number of other players telling KP to get they agree with AJB and get him the ball more. Seems pretty straightforward many others think KP is the reason he’s not getting the ball.
