2019 Receiving Plus-Minus

We continue our examination of the passing game with our annual look at receiving plus-minus. Earlier this week, we showed you passing plus-minus and noted that Drew Brees dominated the decade in that stat. Given that fact, and the fact that Michael Thomas led the league in targets by a landslide, you might assume that Thomas did well in the receiving version of the stat. You'd be correct, but that would be understating it.

Receiving plus-minus is a stat we annually track to help provide context to catch rate. Given the location of a quarterback's passes, it compares a receiver's catch rate in each area to historical baselines. This stat does not consider passes listed as "Thrown Away," "Tipped at Line," "Miscommunication," or "Quarterback Hit in Motion" by Sports Info Solutions charting. The odds of a pass being completed are based on the pass distance, the distance required for a first down, and whether the ball was thrown to the left, middle, or right side of the field. This is a counting stat, so more targets are obviously a great thing for the purposes of what we're talking about here.

For example, based on our formula, the average receiver would have caught 69.3% of the 179 targets that Brees threw to Thomas in 2019. Thomas caught 83.2% of them in. That gives him a receiving plus-minus of +24.9, which breaks the single-season record of +24.2 set last year by … Michael Thomas. Before last year, no one had ever hit +20.0, and now Thomas has threatened to hit 25 twice in two seasons.

Thomas also set a record this year for biggest gap between first and second place, a full +11.3 above the rest of the league. Thomas' massive target volume is, of course, a significant boon for any counting stat, but Saints quarterbacks had a 13.9% CPOE (completion percentage over expected) when targeting Thomas; that's better than any receiver with at least 35 targets last season. @Cantguardmike, indeed.

But Thomas has only been in the league four years. Yes, he has become the second receiver since 2006 to hit at least a +10.0 plus/minus in four years, and the first to do it in four consecutive seasons, but where does that put him on the decade's leaderboards? Well, before we tackle that, we should look at the fleet of receivers trying (and failing) to catch up to him in 2019.

Wide Receivers

A total of 81 wide receivers qualified for this list, but we'll just show the top and bottom rankings to save space here. Each receiver's plus-minus can be found in Football Outsiders Almanac 2020.

There are a lot of repeats from 2018 on this list. Thomas and Tyler Lockett again finish one-two, though Lockett couldn't quite match his hyper-efficiency of two years ago when he was +17.7 on just 65 targets. Stefon Diggs, Keenan Allen, DeAndre Hopkins, Tyreek Hill, and Julio Jones also return from last season; the best of the best receivers tend to score high in this metric year after year.

Hopkins and Diggs, of course, will be changing teams in 2020, which will be very interesting to watch. They're going from Deshaun Watson and Kirk Cousins, two of the 10 most accurate passers by plus-minus, to Kyler Murray (midpack) and Josh Allen (very near the bottom), so it will be very interesting to see which can pull harder, the receiver or the quarterback. It should be noted, to be fair, that Allen did have a receiver on this list -- John Brown, the only Buffalo receiver to put up a positive plus/minus. That's interesting since Allen's overall deep passing numbers were poor.

Brown is especially notable because he was actually in the bottom 15 two years ago. His catch rate of 63.7% may have been the lowest of any of the top wideouts, but his expected catch rate was just 59.7%. Brown was the only Bills receiver with a positive plus/minus; he's almost solely responsible for Allen's numbers improving from 2018 to 2019. Add in Diggs as a second deep threat and the Bills might have something put together.

Chris Godwin is the highest-scoring newcomer on this list, basically flip-flopping plus/minus scores with Mike Evans -- they went from +1.2 and +10.3 in 2018 to +11.6 and +1.1 last season, respectively. It is rare for a double-digit plus/minus season to be a fluke. Only 40 receivers have done it since 2006, and there's really not a terrible name in the bunch. Some are future Hall of Famers while others topped out as either solid options or had their careers cut short by injuries, but there are no duds on the list; Godwin's coming-out party in 2019 was for real. If you remember correctly, Godwin also ranked fourth in YAC+, joining Cooper Kupp as the only players to hit the top 15 in both indexes -- exceptional at catching passes and exceptional with the ball in their hands. With talent like Godwin and Evans, you can see why Tom Brady was drawn to Tampa Bay.

The Texans had three receivers in the top 15, though that wasn't quite enough to knock off the Saints as the top plus-minus team among wideouts. With Hopkins leaving, Will Fuller and Kenny Stills will have a ton more on their plate and will have to keep the same level of efficiency up if the Texans offense isn't going to skip a beat. We do expect it to skip several beats, but at least they had a number of options make the list.

Generally, the bottom of the list features a lot more turnover than the top; if you can't catch, you don't get a second chance to prove you can't catch. Marquez Valdes-Scantling is 2019's exception, just squeaking past the 50-target requirement to put up his second consecutive negative-figure season. The Packers' problems went beyond just Valdes-Scantling, of course; Geronimo Allison just missed the table at -3.1 and even the usually solid Davante Adams barely ending up on the positive side of the ledger at +0.3.

The race for the bottom was a close one, with the Bengals giving their all to get someone to the basement. Four different receivers in the bottom 15 is unheard of; their combined -28.7 plus/minus is the worst we've seen since the 2016 Jets. Joe Burrow has his work cut out for him. But Auden Tate couldn't quite catch Jarius Wright to take last place, as Wright couldn't catch anything. The average receiver would have caught 65.1% of passes thrown Wright's way; that's a -15.1% CPOE. Blame some of that on Carolina's passer situation, but there's a reason Wright is unemployed as of time of writing. Dude dropped six of his 36 catchable balls; that's no bueno.

But we started this section by hinting about Thomas' place on the all-decade list, and, well...

In just four years, Thomas has outdone the totals of any other receiver this decade, with his 2019 season enough to clinch the decade's crown. More to the point, 2019 Thomas alone would have ranked 21st on the list, with 2018 Thomas immediately behind him at 22nd. Yes, Thomas has obviously been helped by his system and having Drew Brees throwing to him; seven different Saints receivers crack the top 50 (Thomas, Marques Colston, Lance Moore, Brandin Cooks, Kenny Stills, Robert Meachem, and Willie Snead). And yes, Thomas racks up a lot of volume, allowing him to climb the leaderboards quickly. But the raw totals really speak for themselves; Brees-to-Thomas is the most guaranteed connection in the sport right now, and it's not particularly close.

Tight Ends

Qualifiers for 2019 will need just 25 targets:

Travis Kelce finished first in this metric as a rookie in 2014 before we were writing yearly articles. For years, his +9.9 that season was his career high, but he broke that this season on his way to leading the position once again. He's only the third tight end to finish first in this category multiple times since 2006, joining Antonio Gates and Rob Gronkowski. Not bad company to keep, there. He may have had the lowest catch rate of the top five tight ends on the table, but he's used far more as a deep threat than any of the other four, with an average depth of target of 9.1 -- George Kittle, Austin Hooper, and Kyle Rudolph are all in the 6-yard range, and Darren Waller only hit 7.4.

Kelce, Hooper, and Rudolph are the three returning figures from last year's top 10, with Hooper turning in his fourth consecutive season with a catch rate at least 9.2% above expected. He now has an 80.1% catch rate in his career, which is the most for any tight end with at least 103 qualified targets. It's incredibly annoying that that stat can't be an even 100, but the tail end of Eric Johnson's career had him with an 80.4% completion rate on 102 targets; no one else even comes close. I suppose Hooper will have to settle for being the highest-paid tight end in the league for now. Cleveland got negative plus/minus from both David Njoku and Demetrius Harris, so Baker Mayfield should benefit significantly from getting to hang with Mr. Hooper.

Technically, there is one more player on this list returning from 2018, but he's returning from the bottom of the list. Two years ago, George Kittle finished fifth-worst in plus/minus at -3.9 -- mostly based on the sheer volume of his 130 targets, but he was a little below average at actually hauling passes in. Well, he worked out those kinks last season to finish third, because why not add great hands to everything else he does. For his career, Kittle now has a +9.2 plus-minus with Jimmy Garoppolo, and a -4.3 plus-minus with everyone else, though oddly his YAC+ is lower with Garoppolo that it was with the motley crew he dealt with in his first two seasons.

The Lions ended up dead last in here by a country mile, with a combined -14.3 plus/minus finishing well, well below Washington's -8.1. T.J. Hockenson alone was worse than the entire Washington lineup combined, boldly leading the Lions to the second-worst tight end total we've recorded behind the 2006 Packers and the case of Bubba Franks forgetting how to catch. Like any Lions stat this season, however, you do have to split this into targets thrown by Matthew Stafford and those thrown by anyone else, as the quarterback's injury derailed the entire offense. Lions tight ends had a -4.0 plus/minus with Stafford and a -10.3 without him on roughly equivalent attempts. That doesn't quite give Hockenson a free pass, mind you -- he was at -3.1 with Stafford and -5.6 without him. If you just project his season-long totals with his Stafford-split catch rate, he would have finished at -4.86, just hundredths behind Dawson Knox's -4.89.

Jason Witten also makes what may well be his last appearance in the top 10 here, as even in his twilight he's still a better tight end than broadcaster. Unlike Michael Thomas, he didn't need 2019 to ensure he stayed atop the 2010s plus/minus table; he was firmly entrenched there the whole time.

How on earth did Kellen Davis manage -12.6 on 90 targets? What in the name of Jay Cutler was happening in Chicago in the early 2010s?

2019 Running Backs

Again, qualifiers need just 25 targets.

Austin Ekeler and Christian McCaffrey were in a league of their own on the receiving tables last year. McCaffrey ended up with the DYAR crown, but Ekeler has now taken the lead in both YAC+ and receiving plus/minus. Both will be significant assets to their new quarterbacks in 2020. The big question around Ekeler is how he'll do now that Melvin Gordon is gone. During Gordon's holdout, Ekeler lined up in the backfield more often and saw his average depth of target go down, running more running back routes than wide receiver routes. During those four weeks, 26 passes were thrown at him. One resulted in defensive pass interference. One was batted down at the line of scrimmage. He caught the other 24. We suspect that he'll do just fine being asked to come out of the backfield more often in 2020.

McCaffrey's improved rushing in 2019 did not come at the expense of his receiving skills; he joins Alvin Kamara and Jalen Richard as returnees from 2018's top tables. Richard is not someone who generally springs to mind when you list top receiving backs in the NFL, and his negative receiving DVOA backs that up. That's mostly because he doesn't do much with the ball in his hands, however; when it comes to actually catching the ball, quarterbacks have had a 4.9% CPOE when targeting him. If he doesn't end up making the Raiders' final roster, he may be of use to someone.

And speaking of people who may be of use to someone, Devonta Freeman is unsigned as of time of writing, and just lost his agent, probably due to turning down on offer from Seattle back in May. He's coming off some poor overall seasons, but he can still catch the ball; if there's room in a Shanahan-style system, he can still contribute. Signing free agents is weird in this COVID-filled world, but he's a name to watch as training camps get going. If training camps get going.

Tarik Cohen makes a move from the top table in 2018 to the bottom of the table last season. Some of this can be blamed on Cohen getting an increased number of dump-offs and emergency throws targeted behind the line of scrimmage, not all of them super accurately. Still, while you can pin a lot of the blame on a poor season from Mitchell Trubisky, sometimes you do have to catch those non-perfectly thrown balls and turn them into something … less negative, at the very least.

And then, at the very bottom, we have Todd Gurley -- along with Nick Chubb, one of two returnees in this year's bottom 10. Gurley was the only qualified running back to catch less than 70% of his targets in 2019, and it's not like he was asked to run a particularly challenging set of routes; his expected catch rate of 81.4% was 0.3% higher than the league average for running backs. With the exception of that 2017 season that earned him the $60-million extension from the Rams, Gurley has had a negative receiving plus/minus every year of his career, though 2019 saw him fall off a cliff onto several other, smaller cliffs, which he proceeded to fall off in turn. There's hope that an improved offensive line in Atlanta can see Gurley's running skills return but please, don't throw him the ball.

Atlanta has seen plenty of success throwing the ball to running backs over the past decade, which is the thin excuse we're going to use to segue into the decade-long tables.

The NFC South knows how to use their running backs, don't they? Also, take a photograph -- there are not many statistics where you'll see a potential Hall of Fame player dead last, but there's Frank Gore. Whatever your position on his eventual Canton status is, we can safely assume it does not hinge on his ability, or lack thereof, to catch footballs.