Wayne outperforming T.O., Moss

I've been doing full-season tape reviews for five years now, and the one fact that stands out more than any other is that player performance does not take place in a vacuum. The level of competition a player faces seems, more times than not, to largely determine the level of production that player achieves.

I first reviewed this in an article in Scientific Football 2005 when I saw that 26 of Peyton Manning's 53 regular-season and postseason touchdown passes that year came against either subpar coverage personnel or no coverage at all.

I decided to take that concept one step further in Scientific Football 2008 by looking at wide receiver performance versus varying levels of competition. I did this by segmenting cornerbacks into three color categories -- red (the most difficult matchups), yellow (average matchups) and green (the most favorable matchups).

I used the 2007 yards per attempt average of each cornerback to determine his color rating, with red being a YPA of less than 7 yards, yellow being between 7 and 9 yards, and green being more than 9 yards. Cornerbacks who didn't have enough passes thrown in their direction to qualify were placed in a separate "non-qualifier" category. I also tracked receiver performance when facing a cornerback and when facing a non-cornerback (i.e., a safety, a linebacker, no coverage, etc.).

This study produced a large amount of very interesting numbers, but for the sake of brevity, I have culled out the top 10 nuggets of information. They are:

1. Randy Moss can be slowed by red- and yellow-rated cornerbacks. I know it sounds crazy to say anything negative about someone who scored 23 touchdowns for the Patriots this past season, but consider this: In the 95 passes Moss had thrown to him while he was being covered by a red- or yellow-rated cornerback, he gained only 541 yards. That equals 5.7 yards per attempt, a terribly low total. Because 62 of those passes came against yellow-rated corners, Moss' YPA actually was less than those cornerbacks' standard YPA in 2007.

2. The Colts' Reggie Wayne is the best wide receiver in the NFL. Moss and Terrell Owens generally are said to hold this spot, but Wayne beats those two in one of the most important indicators of quality among wide receivers: the ability to beat any cornerback. Take a look at the totals of each of these three when facing cornerbacks last season:

Player ---------Att---Yards---YPA ----TD---INT ---Success %
Reggie Wayne---99---1,158---11.7-----9----3--------74.7
Terrell Owens----95---759-----8.0------9----7--------54.7
Randy Moss-----127---924-----7.3-----15----4-------63.8

Wayne easily topped the others in every sub-segment in this metric except in touchdowns, and he equaled Owens in that one. Wayne has spent his entire career playing in the shadow of Marvin Harrison, even though he has put up numbers just as good as Harrison's in most years. In 2007, when Harrison was out for most of the season and Wayne finally got the Colts' spotlight to himself, he still couldn't avoid the shadow on a leaguewide level, even though he once again posted top-of-the-line totals.

(espn.com)