Week 10 Quick Reads

Tampa Bay wide receiver Mike Evans had a good game against Arizona this week, catching four passes for 82 yards in six targets. It was good for 34 DYAR, and though that wasn't enough to put Evans in the top five receivers this week, it was enough to put him in first place among wide receivers this season with 296 DYAR (going into Monday Night Football). He replaces his teammate, Chris Godwin, who had been in first place since Week 4, but fell to fourth place after a rough outing against the Cardinals (12 targets, six catches, 74 yards, only two first downs, -34 DYAR). That is the exception for Godwin this season, however, not the rule -- he made the top five receivers list in Weeks 2, 4, 5, and 6.

For Evans, the limelight is nothing new. The Texas A&M product was the seventh overall draft pick in 2014. He has never finished lower than 27th in receiving DYAR among wideouts, and this would be his third season in the top six. Godwin's emergence has been more gradual -- and surprising. He only started two years at Penn State, and after catching 11 touchdowns as a junior in 2016, he skipped his senior season to enter the 2017 NFL draft. Though he was thought to be on the high end of wideout prospects that season, he lasted until the third round, when Tampa Bay grabbed him with the 84th pick. His first two seasons were quiet, as he failed to make the top 30 in DYAR either year. But he has exploded in 2019 -- his 60 catches are already a career-high, and he needs only 2 more yards and one more touchdown to match his prior standards in those categories as well. And our advanced stats, obviously, are big fans.

It's not terribly unusual for one team to have two receivers rank this high in receiving DYAR. The Bucs would be the 13th team since 1986 with two wide receivers in the top four, and the first since Jordy Nelson ranked second and Randall Cobb fourth for the Packers in 2014. One pair of teammates has taken home the gold and the silver in our seasonal wideout rankings: the Colts in in 2006, when Marvin Harrison finished first and Reggie Wayne finished second. But this is 2019, and in 2019, teams are passing more than they used to -- and when teams throw more passes, the top wide receivers get more DYAR. Evans and Godwin have each started every one of Tampa Bay's nine games this season, combining for 584 receiving DYAR between them. Project that out over 16 games and you get a total of 1,039 DYAR. That would be the most on record for a wide receiver duo on the same team, and make them the first pair to top the 1,000-DYAR threshold.

What we have here is a list of the most feared throwers and passers of the past three decades. Randy Moss' name appears four times, most of wideout; he's followed by Demaryius Thomas with three mentions, followed seven receivers (Cris Carter, Eric Decker, Jordy Nelson, Jerry Rice, John Taylor, Reggie Wayne, and Wes Welker) with two apiece. Of the 20 teams listed here, five were led in pass attempts by Peyton Manning, two by Tom Brady, and two more by Aaron Rodgers; other Hall of Fame-caliber names in that column include Joe Montana, Ben Roethlisberger, Kurt Warner, and Steve Young. Tampa Bay this year is quarterbacked by Jameis Winston, who is not that caliber of player -- but then again, neither were Brian Griese or Scott Mitchell or Matt Schaub, but thanks to the likes of Ed McCaffrey, Herman Moore, and Andre Johnson, they were all able to guide powerful aerial attacks, at least for one season.

These Bucs, though? They're a paradox. Every other team in this table had a passing offense DVOA of at least 23.1%; for reference, that figure would rank 12th in the league this year. Each of these passing games were good, and most were great. The Buccaneers, however, rank 20th this season with a pass offense DVOA of just 4.7%. Somehow, Tampa Bay has put together an offense that features one of the most effective wideout duos in recent memory without actually being very good.

This is because Tampa Bay's passing game is a boom-and-bust affair that vacillates between Death Valley-hot and Siberia-cold. When Evans and Godwin aren't making things right, everything goes very wrong. In only nine games, Winston has taken 34 sacks, most in the league. A high number of sacks will torpedo a team's passing DVOA, but not affect the numbers of its receivers -- even if nobody is getting open and the quarterback is giving up "coverage sacks," the ability to numerically punish receivers for those sacks is way outside our capabilities. Further, Winston also leads the league in interceptions. (We have written about Winston's sacks and interceptions before -- he would join Jon Kitna as the only quarterbacks to lead the league in both categories in the same season.) Interceptions are even worse than sacks when it comes to team DVOA numbers, but are counted the same as any other incompletion for receivers. By their nature, interceptions can be random with no predictive value, especially when dealing with the tiny sample size of individual receiver numbers. Therefore, the blame for interceptions goes to the quarterback, not the receiver. (Obviously, some interceptions are directly the fault of the receiver. We don't get the charting data quickly enough to incorporate that into DVOA/DYAR, but we do cover it at the end of the year.) For the record, Evans and Godwin have each been the target on four of Winston's interceptions. Cleveland's Jarvis Landry and Keenan Allen of the Chargers lead the league with five intercepted targets. If you remove sacks and interceptions from all teams, then Tampa Bay jumps up to fourth place in pass offense DVOA this season, a ranking far more fitting for what Evans and Godwin have done.

Per Spotrac.com, the Buccaneers have Evans under contract for four more years, while Godwin's rookie deal lasts through 2020. Winston, however, will be a free agent after the season. If the Bucs are wise, they'll say goodbye to Winston, in hopes of finding another quarterback who can let Evans and Godwin do what they do without making so many catastrophic mistakes.