Here are comparative ranking and ratings for NFL wide receivers and tight ends through week 11.
There were 88 wide receivers and 30 tight ends in the ESPN rankings, so I am going to stick with those same 118 players. I will post the ESPN scores in the very last columns next to the comparative grades. You can check out the ESPN rankings here: ESPN Analytics RTM
With all the grades and players this is quite a long article. So much so that I can only going to post about 1/4 of the article here on Reddit due to images, pdf links and formatting issues.
Here I will post the section about creating the rankings and ratings for all the wide receivers and tight ends while keeping math to an absolute minimum. If you are interested in any/all of the other 3 parts, you can read the entire article here:
NFL 2023 - Wide Receiver & Tight End Ratings & Rankings
As a quick sysnopsis the full article can be looked at in 4 parts:
- Attempting to dissect the ESPN Analytics Receiver & Tight End metric scores and how they are derived.
- The metrics & grades for all the wide receivers and tight ends compared against their fellow peers. Thus wide receivers are compared to wide receivers, tight ends to tight ends.
- Grading all the wide receivers & tight ends as one large receiver group. This could be looked at as almost a fantasy football list(and is the way ESPN presents their list).
- Attempting to mimic ESPN Analytics wide receiver scores by including the sub scores of OPEN CATCH & YAC.
Before starting, note that the unusual team abbreviations come from Pro-football-reference.com. I know they are a bit odd but you should be able to figure them out.
TLDR: Just look at this first chart. It shows the percentile rank of each team’s wide receivers & tight ends. In this chart, wide receivers are ranked against all other wide receivers, and tight ends against all other tight ends.
NFL 2023 Wide Receiver & Tight End Percentile Ratings by Team
Top 20 Wide Receivers & Tight Ends Litmus Test
The chart below shows the NFL top 20 receivers & tight ends through 11 weeks. One list is from ESPN, the other list are these rankings.
The players the two lists agree on are color coded. The receiver ranking lists agree on 11 players: Brown, Aiyuk, Lamb, Moore, Kittle(TE), Allen, Collins, Dell, Hill, Evans, Metcalf.
Let’s set them aside for a moment and look at who they disagree on for Top 20 rankings.
The 9 players from the left list are: Thielen, Beckham, Bourne, Raymond, Flowers, Downs, Meyers, Andrews(TE), McBride(TE).
The 9 players from the right list are: Jefferson, St. Brown, Chase, Kelce(TE), Waddle, Nacua, Diggs, Shaheed, Samuel.
Which ranking list do you think is a more accurate, or more flawed? It is fine to think they are equally accurate, or equally flawed.
The list on the left is the ESPN Analytics Receiver Rankings. The list on the right are the ratings and ranking you will read about here.
The Comparative WR/TE Receiving Metrics
Here is the list of metrics I chose to use for rating the wide receivers and tight ends.
- 1st Downs / Game
- Yards Before Catch / Reception
- Yards After Catch / Reception
- Average Depth of Target
- Drop % (inverse - lower drop % score higher)
- Passer Rating when Targeted
- Target % (Targets/Routes)
- Reception % (Receptions/Targets)
- Receiving Yards / Route
Now you may have read the other ratings articles I’ve done and noted how ratings are often done by Standard Deviation(StDev in sheets) Units. Let’s do something a little different and use Normal Distribution(normdist in sheets) instead of StDev. Just remember, like all of the ratings done here, the wide receiver & tight end ratings are COMPARATIVE.
In comparative ratings, scores are generated by the performance of one receiver against all receivers, and same for tight ends. Basically, each receiver reeieves a score between 0 - 0.999 for each metric, based on their position in that metric compared to their peers. The player with the highest score in a metric may get 0.98 score, while the lowest may get a score of 0.02. This is quite different from almost all other NFL ratings and rankings, but useful in that it shows who is the best among the position groups when compared to each other, not some standard or formula.
The Wide Receiver & Tight End Metrics & Ratings
So take a look at these charts. One is ranking the wide receivers, the other is ranking the tight ends. Here is the important info:
- Next to each metric is the normalized score for that stat.
- Add up the scores for each of the 9 metrics to get a final score.
- Normal Distribution is used on the Final Scores to generated a percentile for each receiver & tight end.
- For this portion of the ranking & ratings, receivers are measured against receivers, & tight ends are measured against tight ends.
- Thus the percentile score of a wide receiver is the percentile of wide receivers they fall into, and same for tight ends.
- The last 4 columns are ESPN Analytics scores and rankings for comparison.
- There will be PDFs available as some images don’t scall well, particularly on mobile devices.
NFL 2023 Comparative Wide Receiver Ratings PDF
NFL 2023 Comparative Tight End Ratings PDF
NFL 2023 Wide Receiver Ratings through week 11
NFL 2023 Tight End Ratings through week 11
Let’s try to go one step further and estimate the quality of each team’s wide receiver unit. To do so we are going to simply average out their wide receiver scores and compare those averages. It would be better to try to do weighted averages that take into account share of targets or completions in some way, but it would be much more difficult and would require determining the best way to weigh each receiver’s input. So let’s cheat a bit and just look at simple averages and see how accurate they are.
In this pivot table you will see each teams rated receivers, along with the team average. I also included a table showing each team’s receiver ratings based on those averages. In this ultra simple look at it, the best receiving units are San Francisco, Miami, & Philadelphia. The worst are the Jets 3rd from bottom, Washington, & Carolina is last.
Average Wide Receiver Ratings by Team
Now that we have the receivers all sorted by team, let’s add in the tight ends. Some teams did not have a qualified tight end. If this happened, then it is shown as N/A. Other teams had 2 tight ends who qualified for rankings. If this was the case, both are included.
To makes things easy for you to find your team and ratings, the info has be broken down by conference, by division, and by team. This should make comparing and contrasting easy and allow you to focus on your team, division or conference as you see fit.
NFL Wide Receiver & Tight End Ratings by Team
Now let’s simply change the scores into percentiles using normal distribution, then multiply by 100, so you can see where each receiver ranks against other receivers, and where each tight ranks against their fellow peers. Remember a WR is compared against all WRs, and a TE against all TEs
The second chart just rounds off the percentiles for easier reading. The charts are broken down into conferences, divisions, and teams to make it easy to read and digest.
NFL Wide Receiver & Tight End Percentile Ratings by Team
NFL Wide Receiver & Tight End Rounded Percentile Ratings by Team
Best & Worst Receiving Units
Using the final rounded percentiles, we can see that the San Francisco 49ers have the best combination of receivers & tight end. Aiyuk is the #1 rated WR in the 99%, Samuel is a very strong 76% and Kittle is #1 Tight End at 98%.
Other teams with strong receiving units:
- Houston: Collins 96%, Dell 86%, Schultz 81%
- Miami: Hill 96%, Waddle 80%
- Minnesota: Jefferson 98%, Addison 69%, Hockenson 87%
- Baltimore: Beckham 66%, Flower 60%, Edwards 94%
- Philadelphia: Brown 97%, Smith 69%, Goedert 62%
- Detroit: St. Brown 89%, Reynolds 54%, LaPorte 75%
The Bears are quite good with 2 of 3 places set in Moore 96% & Kmet 76% but Mooney 31% is a weak link.
Team with weak receiving units:
- Carolina: Thielen 66%, Chark 14%, Hurst 8%
- Washington: McLaurin 40%, Samuel 30%, Thomas 46%
- NY Jets: Wilson 43%, Lazard 7%, Conklin 56%
- NY Giants: Slayton 37%, Robinson 32%, Waller 70%
The Chiefs are ranked between the Jets & Giants overall but they have Kelce 93% and Rice 63% so they are thin but not hopeless.
So there you have it. A non proprietary comparative ranking of NFL wide receivers & tight ends through week 12. I look forward to reading your thoughts & criticisms in the comments below.
I hope everyone enjoyed their Holiday weekend. Enjoy the football today!