WR Size Matters (that's what she said)

The Browns' somewhat recent release of wide receiver Charles Johnson has left me feeling sad and despondent.  I had such great plans for him, and now...well...I guess I'll just get drunk and listen to The Cure.  Robert Smith understands my pain.  My hopes have been dashed against the rocks that are the skulls of the Browns' brain-trust, and there's nothing I can do.

I have no real issue with the Browns.  I may live in Baltimore, but I can't say that I have any real allegiance to my local team (or any team), or any hatred for their rivals.  Yes, I think the Browns organization may be run by  individuals who are riding the short bus, but that doesn't necessarily mean I have a lower opinion of them than I do of the 31 other teams.  It's just that in this particular case, I am completely confounded as to what their plan might be at the wide receiver position.  What's the deal with all of those midget receivers that they seem to be clinging to, at the expense of my Chosen One?  Yes, I'm looking at you Andrew Hawkins, Travis Benjamin and Taylor Gabriel.  Your diminutive stature confuses me.

I'm not saying that these sorts of guys can't be good, but I do tend to believe that the odds aren't in their favor.  They're not just small; they're really really really small.  They're so small, that they ask their wives to reach things that are on high shelves.  They're so small that calling them 'cute' or 'adorable' seems kind of like a fitting description.  Nobody calls Demaryius Thomas or Calvin Johnson cute.  No, they're too terrifying and huge for that.

Instead of doing my regular ranting about the degree to which combine data and statistical production in college may be able to predict success (to some degree), let's just make this a ridiculously simple discussion about physical mass.  I'm going to present 2 lists.  The first list will show all of the wide receivers who are under 190 pounds, who have managed to rank in the top 25 for receiving yards during the last five years.  The second list will show all of the receivers who weigh 214 pounds or more, who have managed to rank in the top 25 in receiving yards during the last five years.  Choosing 214 pounds as the cutoff point may seem like a random number, but there is a reason for it, which we'll get to a bit later.  Regardless, this is all intended to look at the two extreme ends of the bell curve when it comes to one very simple measurement, weight.  I couldn't make this simpler if I tried.

Besides listing where the players ranked in NFL receiving yards (just among wide receivers, since we want to exclude tight ends and running backs), we will also list where they ranked in the the NFL when it came to receiving touchdowns.  I should also mention that these players have their height listed in inches, and their weight is based on their current listed weight, rather than their combine weigh in.  Okey dokey, let's get to the list.

2013
Player	Height	Weight	Rec.	Yards	TDs	Yrd/Rank	TD/Rank
Antonio Brown	70	186	110	1,499	8	2	13
DeSean Jackson	69	178	82	1,332	9	9	11
T.Y. Hilton	69	183	82	1,083	5	17	25
Harry Douglas	71	183	85	1,067	2	19	69
2012
Player	Height	Weight	Rec.	Yards	TDs	Yrd/Rank	TD/Rank
Wes Welker	69	185	118	1,354	6	8	26
2011
Player	Height	Weight	Rec.	Yards	TDs	Yrd/Rank	TD/Rank
Wes Welker	69	185	122	1,569	9	2	4
Antonio Brown	70	186	69	1,108	2	13	68
Nate Washington	73	183	74	1,023	7	16	18
Percy Harvin	71	184	87	967	6	19	26
DeSean Jackson	69	178	58	961	4	20	43
2010
Player	Height	Weight	Rec.	Yards	TDs	Yrd/Rank	TD/Rank
DeSean Jackson	69	178	47	1056	6	12	24
Johnny Knox	72	185	51	960	5	20	35
Mario Manningham	71	185	60	944	9	21	11
Anthony Armstrong	70	185	44	871	3	24	52
Percy Harvin	71	184	71	868	5	25	35
2009
Player	Height	Weight	Rec.	Yards	TDs	Yrd/Rank	TD/Rank
Wes Welker	69	185	123	1,348	4	2	37
DeSean Jackson	69	178	62	1,156	9	11	7
Chad Johnson	73	188	72	1047	9	18	7

So, out of 125 possible opportunities for a sub-190 pound receiver to make it into the NFL's top 25 for receiving yards (5 years times 25 possible slots, duh?), we seem to have 18 occasions where this actually happened.  This means that sub-190 pound receivers seem to appear in the top 25 about 14.4% of the time.  Whether this is actually a good result or not somewhat depends on how many sub-190 pound receivers there are in the league.  If, for example, only 10% of the receivers coming into the league are in the sub-190 pound range, appearing in the top 25 around 14.4% of the time might be a good result.  On the other hand, if significantly more than 14.4% of the receivers that come into the league are under 190 pounds, then perhaps these pipsqueaks aren't the best guys to bet on.

To answer this question I decided to look outside of my own database of players, and went to NFLCombineresults.com.  I wanted to make sure that I was getting a fairly random sample of NFL Draft prospects, and their weights, since there was no way to determine if my own database of players wasn't biased.  In the end, it seems that 136 out of the 583 wide receiver prospects on NFLcombineresults.com fell into the sub-190 pound range.  That works out to 23.32% of the wide receiver draft pool.  To double check this, I compared it to my own database of players, where we got a result of 22.55% who fell into this weight range.  Either way, the results are pretty similar, and significantly more than the 14.4% that are making it into the list above.  So, it seems that sub-190 pound receivers are making it into the top 25 receiving yards list about 36-38% less often than we might expect, relative to the percentage of the NFL receiver population that they probably make up.

Now, we come to the receivers who weigh 214 pounds or more, and I guess I should explain why I chose 214 pounds as the cutoff point.  Initially, I was going to set the bar at 210 pounds, but this wound up with a larger pool of wide receivers than I really wanted.  When I moved the mark to 214 pounds, I ended up with a group that makes up a very similar portion of the NFL receiver population to what we find with the sub-190 pound players, only at the opposite end of the scale.  According to NFLcombineresults.com, players who weigh 214 pounds or more should make up about 20.96% of the NFL's receivers.  In my own database of players, they make up about 23.42% of the league's receivers.  So, about 21-23.4% should be 214 pounds or more, and about 22.5-23.3% should be under 190 pounds.  That seems close enough for government work, and should make our comparisons reasonably fair, as they both seem to occupy a similar portion of the league's receiver population.

Now, onto the list of receivers who weigh 214 pounds or more, who finished in the top 25 for receiving yards during the last 5 years.

2013
Player	Height	Weight	Rec.	Yards	TDs	Yrd/Rank	TD/Rank
Josh Gordon	75	225	87	1646	9	1	11
Calvin Johnson	77	236	84	1492	12	3	3
Demaryius Thomas	75	229	92	1430	14	4	1
Alshon Jeffery	75	216	89	1421	7	6	18
Andre Johnson	75	230	109	1407	5	7	25
Pierre Garcon	72	216	113	1346	5	8	25
Jordy Nelson	75	217	85	1314	8	10	13
Brandon Marshall	76	230	100	1295	12	11	3
Eric Decker	75	214	87	1288	11	12	5
Dez Bryant	74	220	93	1233	13	13	2
Vincent Jackson	77	230	78	1224	7	14	18
Anquan Boldin	73	220	85	1179	7	15	18
Michael Floyd	74	220	65	1041	5	22	25
Larry Fitzgerald	75	218	82	954	10	25	7
2012
Player	Height	Weight	Rec.	Yards	TDs	Yrd/Rank	TD/Rank
Calvin Johnson	77	236	122	1964	5	1	30
Andre Johnson	75	230	112	1598	4	2	40
Brandon Marshall	76	230	118	1508	11	3	4
Demaryius Thomas	75	229	94	1434	10	4	6
Vincent Jackson	77	230	72	1384	8	5	12
Dez Bryant	74	220	92	1382	12	6	3
Julio Jones	75	220	79	1198	10	11	6
Marques Colston	76	225	83	1154	10	13	6
Michael Crabtree	73	214	85	1105	9	14	10
Eric Decker	75	214	85	1064	13	17	2
Miles Austin	74	215	66	943	6	23	26
Anquan Boldin	73	220	65	921	4	24	40
2011
Player	Height	Weight	Rec.	Yards	TDs	Yrd/Rank	TD/Rank
Calvin Johnson	77	236	96	1681	16	1	1
Larry Fitzgerald	75	218	80	1411	8	4	9
Jordy Nelson	75	217	68	1263	15	7	2
Brandon Marshall	76	230	81	1214	6	8	26
Dwayne Bowe	74	221	81	1159	5	11	33
Marques Colston	76	225	80	1143	8	12	9
Vincent Jackson	77	230	60	1106	9	14	4
Dar. Heyward-Bey	74	219	64	975	4	18	43
Julio Jones	75	220	54	959	8	22	9
Pierre Garcon	72	216	70	947	6	24	26
2010
Player	Height	Weight	Rec.	Yards	TDs	Yrd/Rank	TD/Rank
Andre Johnson	75	230	86	1216	8	6	14
Dwayne Bowe	74	221	72	1162	15	7	1
Larry Fitzgerald	75	218	90	1137	6	8	24
Calvin Johnson	77	236	77	1120	12	9	2
Miles Austin	74	215	69	1041	7	14	17
Marques Colston	76	225	84	1023	7	15	17
Brandon Marshall	76	230	86	1014	3	16	52
Terrell Owens	75	224	72	983	9	17	11
Braylon Edwards	75	214	53	904	7	22	17
2009
Player	Height	Weight	Rec.	Yards	TDs	Yrd/Rank	TD/Rank
Andre Johnson	75	230	101	1569	9	1	7
Miles Austin	74	215	81	1320	11	3	3
Vincent Jackson	77	230	68	1167	9	9	7
Brandon Marshall	76	230	101	1120	10	13	5
Larry Fitzgerald	75	218	97	1092	13	15	1
Marques Colston	76	225	70	1074	9	16	7
Anquan Boldin	73	220	84	1024	4	20	37
Calvin Johnson	77	236	67	984	5	21	28

Okay, let's get to it.  Out of 125 possible slots in the top 25, receivers who weigh 214 pounds or more have filled 53 of them.  That works out to 42.4% of the league's top 25 receiving years, in terms of yards, coming from a group that should only make up about 21-23.4% of the league's total pool of receivers.  It could be said that these bulkier receivers seem to be dominating the league at a rate that is perhaps 81-97% higher than what you might expect given the percentage of the league's receiver population that they occupy.  I guess this isn't exactly shocking, since this is sort of what we probably all expected, isn't it?

Let's consider something outside of the degree to which these players dominate in the receiving yards category.  Let's look at how they fare when it comes to producing touchdowns.  What if we examined the difference between each player's "TD/Rank" and their "Yrd/Rank"? Well, If we did that, sub-190 pound receivers' TD/Rank would fall between 14.05 to 10.5 slots lower than their Yrd/Rank, depending on whether we were looking at the average or median level of decline.  Small guys may get good yardage, but they don't tend to score a lot of touchdowns.  On the other hand, when we look at the receivers who weigh 214 pounds or more, their TD/Rank only falls between 3.09 to 2 slots, again depending on whether we are looking at the average or median level of decline.  I'd say that this minimal drop in TD/Rank is almost nonexistent, though touchdown catches can still always be a bit fluky.  So, not that this will come as any real surprise, the larger receivers not only dominate when it comes to appearances in the top 25 for receiving yards, but they also tend to rank much higher when it comes to producing touchdowns.  Yes, duh, duh duh.  Everybody knows this, or suspects it.  I'm just not sure that the Browns have figured it out yet.

Okay, so everybody kind of expects larger receivers to dominate.  Still, the degree to which this happens seems to get overlooked to some extent.  Among players in the top 25 in receiving yards, players who weigh 214 pounds make 2.94 times more appearances than sub-190 pound players.  Among players in the top 25 for touchdowns, we see players who weigh 214 pounds appearing 4.66 times as often as sub-190 pound players.  But what if we step things up a bit, and look at the top10 rather than the top 25?  When we do that, there are 4.8 times as many top 10 receiving yards appearances for players who weigh 214 pounds or more than there are for sub-190 pound players.  With top 10 appearances for receiving touchdowns, players who weigh 214 pounds or more show up 9.33 times more often than such appearances by sub-190 pound receivers.  The more demanding your expectations become, the more you seem to wander into the land of the plus sized receiver. 

And yet, the Browns felt it was vitally important to hold onto 3 rather minuscule wide receivers, while cutting my love-child Charles Johnson.  Let's take a look at the evil hobgoblins who have been upsetting my dreams, and see how they compare to the sub-190 pound receivers who have made it in to the top 25 in the past five years.

Browns' Midgets	Height	Weight
Taylor Gabriel	68	167
Andrew Hawkins	67	180
Travis Benjamin	70	175
AVG Top 25 Midget	70.22	183.27

Even by the average standards of munchkin sized receivers, this trio of Browns' receivers appears to be surprisingly small.  Of course, whenever a team signs players like these guys fans start saying things like "This guy could be our Wes Welker/DeSean Jackson/Antonio Brown!".  Sure, that could happen, but the odds are that it won't.  Wes Welker, DeSean Jackson and Antonio Brown are somewhat peculiar players, and in no way do I wish to diminish their accomplishments.  They've been excellent.  Still, they are sort of the exceptions to the rule, and considering that only one of them was selected before the 6th round, it's not as if we can really trust the idea that NFL talent scouts have a great eye for these types of players.  These players are most likely the proverbial nut found by a blind squirrel.

Oddly enough, if there was one pint sized receiver on the Browns' roster that actually interests me, it might be Taylor Gabriel, who's the smallest of the lot.  At least he was reasonably productive in college, which is more than I can say for Travis Benjamin.  Hawkins is a bit more of a mystery, since he split time at cornerback while at Toledo, making his statistical profile a bit peculiar.  Still, the question remains, do they really need to hold onto three of these guys?  How many kick returner/slot receiver types of players does one team need?  Also, what do you do with a slot receiver, when you have practically nobody to 'slot' them between?  Are we really counting on Miles "Ouch, my hamstring" Austin to make it through a complete season uninjured?  It seems unlikely.

The real problem is that there appears to be a bit of a ceiling for munchkin receivers, that perhaps isn't there for the larger players.  Saying where an individual player's 'ceiling' and 'floor' exists, isn't something I would really like to do.  Yes, occasionally a little guy breaks through, and produces at a high level.  But is that a reason to horde these types of players just on the off chance of this happening?  So far, the 28 year old Hawkins has averaged 28.42 receiving yards per game played, with a total of 4 career receiving touchdowns.  Benjamin has averaged 18.31 receiving yards per game played, and 2 career receiving touchdowns.  Both fall a bit short of the 35 yards per game played that I generally consider to be an average result.  Oh, but Benjamin was drafted in the 3rd round, so the team can't possibly cut him...uggh.  Shoot me now.

Do we really think that the highly athletic 6'2" and 215# Charles Johnson's floor couldn't have at least equaled such mediocre production?  A mere 454 receiving yard season with 1 or 2 touchdowns would have been sufficient to exceed the output of these players, and his size alone should make him a much more viable red zone threat.  I would think that practically any halfway competent receiver could hit that mark if given a chance.

Maybe the Browns have some ingenious plan to join all three of these waifish receivers together to form something like Voltron.  That would certainly be awesome, and make my suffering worthwhile.  Maybe they will develop some insane offense that involves lateraling the ball from one pipsqueak to another and then to another.  Maybe the Browns will become the 'all kick return' team, and completely forgo having a passing offense.  Yeah, they might just catch everyone sleeping with their super secret special teams assault.  Maybe they are constructing some sort of wide receiver Russian nesting doll, and needed a few pipsqueaks for the inner layers.  I also really have to wonder if Browns' GM Ray Farmer has his house guarded by a swarming pack of chihuahuas, figuring that as a group they might accomplish the job of one rottweiler.

While I genuinely wish Cleveland fans the best, I have to admit that I'm not feeling terribly fond of their GM at this point.  You're killing my dreams Mr. Farmer!  There will be no Christmas gifts or birthday cards for you.  If you want to apologize, I'll just be lying here weeping into my pillow, and waiting for you to give Charles Johnson another look.