Age and Rookie Wide Receiver prospects: The ‘WhipperSnapper’
The only thing a productive wide receiver can’t be is unproductive in college. Everything else is an argument about what kind of production to value, and how much to value it. Early production should be measured a premium. Most models and analysis I’ve seen also take into account a player’s last and best seasons as well.
This is also at the heart of the College Dominator metric we’ve been using a while. While Breakout Age (the age at which a player owns 20 percent of a team’s touchdowns and yards) is a perfectly good measure of how to value a rookie’s early production, I’ve found examining early production in the same way as we measure College Dominator manner helpful as well.
Breakout Age is far more accurate and predictive, I should say, according to the tests I know how to run anyway. But by converting a player’s early production into a mini-College Dominator rating, it creates an easy one to one comparison for both sides of their college production. In other words, I’ve found it more striking when compared it to past examples of successful players, and think it underlines the point better. I’m calling it the “WhipperSnapper” because, well, wouldn’t you?
Below is a table of the most productive wide receivers through their first three NFL seasons (in yards.) I’ve listed their College Dominator, and their “WhipperSnapper”, as well as their Breakout Age for comparison.
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By taking “WhipperSnapper” away from College Dominator we get the “Whipper Diff” (naming things is fun!), literally the difference between how much of their production was done before the age of 20. If the “Whipper Diff” is 0.0 then they gained all of their production before the age of 20. This is perhaps the simplest way I’ve found to highlight the importance of early production. In the example above we can see that since 2001, there are three examples of players who gained the majority of their production after the age of 20 in the top 18 producers.
As you can see with Brandin Cooks “Whipper Diff” is also able to highlight a difference in production that Breakout Age did not.
I’ve done the same thing for every draft class since 2001, and the same trend happens. The large majority of producers in the first three years of their NFL career stand out with a low difference between their College Dominator and “WhipperSnapper”. Here’s how the 2015 draft class – as the most recent example to cross the three-year production window – shakes out.
Regardless of draft capital, age, size, weight and athletic measurement, early college production identifies better players.
I think it would be a mistake to rank players using this by itself, to be clear. A minus number like Jamison Crowder’s -1.6 percent isn’t proportionally positioned in “Whipper Diff” to a plus number, nor to another negative number like Sammie Coates -7.5%. But a large “Whipper Diff” should be enough to put a red flag on a prospect for fantasy and cleanly highlight those that corresponded to the early production profile of the elite players since 2001.
There will always examples to remind us that it’s not perfect, just like Brandon Marshall, Brandin Cooks, and Anquan Boldin. But by and large, if we are shooting for the best odds with the highest hit rate, early production in college matters. We should include some consideration of when a player produced in college as well as how much of their team’s production they created. Comparing College Dominator and “WhipperSnapper” can do that.
I’ve been working with @Slavin22 to compile a list of the “market share” data for every player since 2000. You can find a link to it for free on my Twitter page here:
Rookie WR Class: Market Share By Age data (2001-2018):https://t.co/Iiktimkapb
— Peter Howard (@pahowdy) February 20, 2018
But just in case you don’t enjoy spending your free time trolling through a large Google Sheet full of percentages (what are the odds, right?), I’ve already done it for every wide receiver in the 2018 class and added the WhipperSnapper and Whipper Diff below.
We don’t have NFL production to organize them by just yet, obviously. But luckily, we don’t need it because the crack team here at DLF has already ranked them ranked here:
Here we see the concern many have over Courtland Sutton and Calvin Ridley. In the same way that Brandon Marshall’s College Dominator is high despite his late breakout age, WhipperSnapper takes Ridley’s first year (age 20) and points out that he did something young at least. His -3.3 Whipper Diff and Courtland Sutton’s -5.5 could be enough to indicate that their early production could align them with an Alshon Jeffery, T.Y. Hilton, A.J. Green and Mike Wallace archetype. But that smells of chasing the outliers to me. With prospects like DJ Moore, Michael Gallup, Auden Tate and Christian Kirk below them in projected rank, I’d be more tempted to fade them.
Anthony Miller is also a player with some buzz and decent production. But he is definitely flagged as someone who struggled to produce early and really came on late. Deon Cain is within the margin for “T.Y. Hilton Error” at least, but should be viewed with caution even at WR10.
Also, note that on average this class’s market share numbers are low compared to elite players and past draft classes.
Below the fold, Deontay Burnett and Keke Coutee and DJ Chark stand out as players with high College Dominators – over 30 percent – and great WhipperSnapper and Whipper Diff scores. They would be players I’m interested in taking in the later rounds if I the draft was tomorrow.
I haven’t finished calculating the numbers for every potential prospect just yet, and the list will grow and shrink considerably up to and after the draft with UDFA signings. But of those not yet ranked by DLF, Wyatt Demps, Devonte Boyd are already two names worth checking out. They also have College Dominators over 30 percent and produced the majority of it before the age of 20 according to WhipperSnapper. I’ll be watching to see if either is drafted or, more likely, where they signed as UDFAs.
Anyway, thanks for checking it out.
Peter Howard.
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UDFA's matter | British ex-pat | Writer of things
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