Playmaker Score 2016 – a WR metric thing

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2016/playmaker-score-2016
Football Outsiders

28 Mar 2016
Playmaker Score 2016

by Nathan Forster

Anyone who doubts that advanced statistics can provide insight into the potential success of NFL draft prospects should look back at last year’s Playmaker Score projections from Football Outsiders. Entering the 2015 NFL draft, most observers saw a close, three-way race for the title of the best receiver in the class between Amari Cooper, Kevin White, and DeVante Parker. However, Playmaker Score thought that Cooper was clearly the top wide receiver prospect of 2015. It also identified an injury-prone late-round afterthought named Stefon Diggs as a prospect so promising that he was in striking distance of both White and Parker, even after factoring in those players’ much stronger ratings from scouts.

There’s still plenty of time for these players’ careers to develop, but early returns suggest that Playmaker Score got it right. Cooper led all rookie wide receivers with 1,070 yards and Diggs, playing on the run-first Minnesota Vikings, managed a strong second place with 720 receiving yards. On the other side, though Parker came on strong at the end of the season, he finished just sixth among rookie wide receivers in receiving yards. The jury’s still out on White, who missed his entire rookie year on injured reserve.

There is no guarantee that Playmaker Score will be as accurate in 2016 as it seems to have been in 2015. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to write last year off as mere statistical gobbledygook.

Playmaker Score is based on a statistical analysis of all Division I wide receivers drafted in the years 1996-2013. Playmaker Score consists of the following elements, which are the factors that historically correlate to NFL success:

The wide receiver prospect’s best or “peak” season for receiving yards per team attempt (i.e., a wide receiver with 1,000 receiving yards whose team passed 400 times would score a “2.50.”)
The wide receiver prospect’s peak season for receiving touchdowns per team attempt.
The difference between the prospect’s peak season for receiving touchdowns per team attempt and the prospect’s most recent season for receiving touchdowns per team attempt (this factor is simply “0” for a player whose peak season was his most recent season).
The wide receiver’s vertical jump from pre-draft workouts.
A binary variable that rewards players who enter the draft as underclassmen and punishes those who exhaust their college eligibility.
The wide receiver’s college career yards per reception.
The wide receiver’s rushing attempts per game during their peak season for receiving yards per team attempt.

Playmaker Score has two outputs: “Playmaker Rating” and “Playmaker Projection.” Playmaker Rating is the “purest” output for Playmaker Score: it is expressed as a percentage that measures how highly the player ranks historically based on the factors evaluated by Playmaker Score. For example, a player with a 75 percent Playmaker Rating scores more highly than 75 percent of wide receiver prospects drafted since 1996. Playmaker Projection is a more realistic measurement. Playmaker Projection acknowledges that a player with a first-round grade and a mediocre Playmaker Score is more likely to succeed than a seventh-rounder that Playmaker Score loves. Thus, in addition to the Playmaker Score factors, Playmaker Projection also incorporates a transformed variable based on the player’s projected draft position from NFLDraftScout.com.

Here are the Playmaker Scores for the top wide receiver prospects available in the 2016 NFL draft

Pharoh Cooper, South Carolina

Historically, wide receivers with a high number of rushing attempts in college tend to also have low yards per reception numbers, because these receivers are likely to be involved in the short passing game as well. Although high numbers of rushing attempts and high yards per reception numbers correlate to NFL success, few wide receivers have both. Pharoh Cooper bucks this trend. Cooper posted an impressive 15.7 yards per catch, even while rushing the football more than 60 times for the Gamecocks in his final season.

This is sort of interesting. Shrug.