So let’s also look at yards after the catch per reception. Once he’s open, has run a long ways and has caught the pass, it’d be nice if he could keep running without being tackled."> 5 since it’s harder to catch deep throws than short ones.) (Air yards and catch rate are usually at odds with each other, correlation between those two metrics was -0.7. Then he still has to catch the darn ball, so we’ll look at his catch rate.Ideally, receivers can go deep, so we’ll look at how far the ball travels before it gets to him ( air yards per target).The guy has to get open, so we’ll look at how often the ball comes his way ( targets) as a percentage of his routes run.We can measure how good Jones has been by breaking down what makes a great all-around receiver: Moss in particular showed that a receiver who can stretch the field in all directions with speed, and then pluck balls from over defenders’ heads, can make an offense run far more efficiently than its individual components suggest it should.īut Jones’s dominance is more than just a product of “big guy runs fast.” Since he returned from a foot fracture that cost him most of the 2013 season, no receiver has put those gifts to better on-field use than Jones - across every aspect of the position, from the flashy to the technical. Think of Randy Moss (who, at 6-foot-4, ran an “unofficial” 4.25 second 40 in 1998) or, more recently, the two unrelated Johnsons, Andre (6-foot-2, 4.40) and Calvin (6-foot-5, 4.35), who used that formula to dominate the league’s receiving leaderboard in recent years. Wideouts that big and that fast are very difficult to cover. While Jones was one of the fastest at the position regardless of height, most NFL wide receivers as tall as Jones ran the 40 slower than the overall position average of 4.47 seconds. "> 4 All of the faster receivers are also smaller - nearly 5 inches shorter than the 6-foot-3 Jones, on average. Still, for most players, combine times give a decent approximation of their pure speed. Needless to say, that number is probably a tad outdated for an NFL veteran like, say, 37-year-old Steve Smith Sr. combine data is a snapshot of speed at age 21 or so. Posting a 4.34-second 40-yard-dash before he was drafted, Jones ran the ninth-fastest combine time of any wideout who had at least 400 receiving yards in the 2016 season. His explosiveness and diversity of skills enabled offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan to build the one of the best offenses in NFL history.Īt the most basic level, Jones dominates because of an unmatched combination of size and speed. "> 2 or even play-by-play grades, 3 Jones was the receiver who kept defensive coordinators up at night worrying about all the havoc he could wreak. "> 1 advanced metrics defense-adjusted yards above replacement. Just about any way you slice it, whether using traditional stats, Yards per game, for instance. Let’s get this out of the way at the top: Julio Jones was the best receiver in football this season.
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