2020 Rookie Wide Receiver Breakout Chances

Stephen Gill

Last year, I created a model to predict how likely a given rookie wide receiver is to ever have a breakout season in their career. It sounds pretty simple, but I had yet to see someone do it just how I had — with a logistic regression model (which is much better for handling success/fail variables) and with all relevant rookie information (draft capital, Combine testing, target competition, etc.) put to use.

As I said in last year’s article, we know what factors matter when trying to predict what rookies will see success and which ones won’t, but we don’t know how to weigh those variables together. This model does just that.

After spending a long time testing different combinations of variables to predict rookie receiver success (whether or not they ever have a breakout season), I found the best combination of variables and used that model to predict the 2019 rookies’ success chances. (For those interested, those five measures were draft round, college games played, number of breakout seasons in college, maximum single-season college yardage market share, and, surprisingly, whether the player’s NFL offensive coordinator is returning from the season before. Read more on the background, accuracy, and history of the model here.)

Now, let’s apply that model to 2020’s exciting receiving class. I’ll break the model’s predictions into four player groupings in order to make the data more digestible.

Round One Receivers

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Already, we can see a lot more promise at the receiving position compared to 2019. Last season, the model gave just one receiver (N’Keal Harry) better than a 60 percent chance to have a breakout season in the NFL; this year, there are three such players. Jalen Reagor and Brandon Aiyuk lead the way, both with over 80 percent breakout chances. Each boasts an extremely strong rookie profile, with tremendous college production, first-round draft capital, and the promise that their coaching staff knows how they’d like to utilize them.

Soon after, we find CeeDee Lamb, whose collegiate statistics are a bit more pedestrian after competing with Marquise Brown and other strong receiving prospects for targets. (Aiyuk had to compete with Harry, himself, for targets in 2018, but Lamb had one more season of competition with Brown than Aiyuk had with Harry. That’s a primary reason why Aiyuk still finishes a bit higher.)

After that, we see a pretty steep drop-off in the class’s other three first-round prospects, each of which highlight some notes I wanted to make about this model. First is the Alabama receiver issue: Henry Ruggs and Jerry Jeudy (and next year, Jaylen Waddle and Devonta Smith) faced an unprecedented level of competition for targets at Alabama, which systematically deflates each player’s receiving market share. I’d argue that the Crimson Tide’s receiver room was the best in recent history, meaning that Jeudy and Ruggs’s stats were not just deflated, but basically minimized. The model’s primary shortcoming is how it doesn’t factor for target competition, and these two receive easily the strongest punishment from that. With surroundings more like Aiyuk or Reagor’s, we could expect Ruggs’s chances to look closer to 75 percent and Jeudy’s to be closer to 50 percent.

(There are a few ways to account for college target competition, but the value in this model comes from its simplicity. Adding another entire variable here, for a factor that’s pretty minor for 90 percent of receivers adds a lot of noise to the entire model, which weakens its predictive power for the rest. Thus, because we can properly identify these exceptions, I’ve left that variable out.)

That leaves Justin Jefferson, who surprisingly, is also given just a 35 percent chance. That is driven in part by target competition from Ja’Marr Chase driving his own college market share down, but primarily from the Vikings’ offensive coordinator change, after Gary Kubiak filled in for Kevin Stefanski this off-season. In fact, Jefferson’s chances would more than double if Stefanski were to have stayed in town.

Why is that hit so big? Intuitively, it makes sense that a player’s chances would weaken. One would reason that a guy who was calling the shots last season would know precisely what his offense was missing the season before, and go to fill that hole; meanwhile, a new coordinator wouldn’t have as good of a feel for his personnel. But the effect doesn’t seem like it’d be that strong.

Well, the results speak for themselves: As of last season in the 15 years of data I worked with, 25 of 30 receivers taken in the first round to returning coordinators broke out, while just nine of 23 receivers taken in the first to new coordinators did so. The effect is huge. And, it’s why Jefferson’s given roughly a one in three chance to breakout. It’s another reason why Jeudy is given such a low breakout probability, which does make sense, given how the Broncos are simply throwing weapons at Drew Lock this off-season.

I’d sum up these results in this way: On paper, Jalen Reagor and Brandon Aiyuk are great bets. Aiyuk may have reason for concern given the number of mouths to feed in San Francisco, but we should trust Kyle Shanahan to utilize him to some degree. CeeDee Lamb is another strong bet. Meanwhile, my model is bearish on Henry Ruggs, but it overlooks important context in his profile. I feel closer to Aiyuk or Lamb-level confidence in him. Finally, Justin Jefferson and Jerry Jeudy are degraded without it being their fault; unfortunately, prior receiving prospects would show that that concern is valid, nonetheless. With that said, Jeudy’s prediction is still artificially low, and I’d place a similar level of confidence in him as I do in Jefferson.

Day Two Receivers

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Three tiers stand out to me here. Denzel Mims, Michael Pittman, KJ Hamler, and Tee Higgins are all given better than one in three chances to enjoy a breakout season — pretty good for prospects taken outside of day one. Each of these players were taken in the second round and had strong college production. Hamler does not have the benefit of a returning offensive coordinator — a surprising, but important distinction, as previously noted — but he makes up for it with stellar collegiate production in just two seasons.

Generally, year-one surroundings aren’t extremely impactful on whether a rookie ever has a breakout season. However, given the youth of Courtland Sutton, Jerry Jeudy, and Noah Fant, among others, I feel Hamler’s breakout chances are overstated with this model. He’s facing a pretty unprecedented level of young competition for targets.

In our second tier, we see Laviska Shenault, Bryan Edwards, and Chase Claypool. Shenault checks the production box, but he receives a ding for not having a returning coordinator. Meanwhile, 48 games is a lot of wear for Edwards, without him ever really reaching a dominant level of production. He deserves credit for having four breakout seasons alongside Deebo Samuel for most his time, but one would like to see a higher high at some point than his actual maximum yardage market share. Finally, Claypool receives hesitance for having just one season of note despite playing in almost four full seasons.

Devin Duvernay and Van Jefferson are the uninspiring prospects in this year’s day two crop. Duvernay never faced top-end competition for targets, and still managed just one breakout season despite playing in 43 games as a Longhorn. Jefferson, soon to be 24 years old, played in virtually four full seasons, and was never a difference-maker in a receiving offense. This was understandable when he was competing against DK Metcalf and AJ Brown at Ole Miss, but in Florida’s offense, you’d expect way more production in two seasons than Jefferson provided, given the talent around him. There really wasn’t a lot to his profile to suggest the Rams take him in the second round. A five percent chance may be a bit harsh, but I really can’t fault the model for it.

Early Day Three Receivers

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Antonio Gandy-Golden’s predicted breakout chances look really high, but opposite to Jeudy and Ruggs, I think those chances are strongly inflated by the context surrounding his receiving production. AGG is 6’4” and knows how to use that size. Against smaller schools (and smaller defensive backs), that’s all you really need in order to produce. His highlights indicate as much. Against even a little bit taller and more competent pass defense, I feel those numbers fall a good bit, leading me to be skeptical of his college stats as a whole. Those are what drive that strong breakout prediction, so I’m much lower on him than the model is. (Relatedly, I’m lower on him than the rest of DLF’s rookie rankers are.) But I’ll get off my soapbox.

Next, we see Quintez Cephus, Gabriel Davis, Tyler Johnson, John Hightower, and KJ Osborn all have reasonably strong chances given their draft capital. Each has plenty of competition in order to emerge from the rest of their receiving corps, but each also has shown promise that they could be good enough to do just that (with exception to Osborn, perhaps).

The model is somewhat lower on Darnell Mooney, Joe Reed, and Collin Johnson. Each played a ton of college games and had at least one breakout season, but never managed more than a 27.2 percent receiving yardage market share. The model simply doesn’t see much of a ceiling to any of them.

Late Day Three Receivers And Selected UDFAs

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Here are our lottery tickets. Quez Watkins, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Isaiah Hodgins, and James Proche were all raw, high-upside picks for their respective teams. It makes sense: When you’re picked so low (or not at all), players typically need that kind of upside to break out. If you weren’t watching them already, these are the sorts of guys you should be targeting in the late stages of rookie drafts in deeper leagues.

Interestingly, undrafted free agents Quartney Davis and Trishton Jackson are two of the class’s highest end-of-draft scorers. Their lack of wear, with 23 games each, works in their favor, as it makes their production in those games more impressive. Davis further benefits from not having an offensive coordinator returning — it’s generally a better sign for late picks despite being a bad sign for early picks because, with a new coordinator, there’s less certainty in a hierarchy for targets, and variance is good for those who start low on the totem pole.

Finally, here are all of the class’s receivers compiled into a single table.

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stephen gill