Impact of the #2 WR on Elite #1 WRs

by Michael Zangrilli unlucky@attbi.com

Data provided by www.football-reference.com

I started this analysis by making a table of the top 100 WR seasons from 1983 to 2001. This provided me a list of elite WRs, and I then matched them up with the 2nd most productive WR on the team. The scoring system is 6 per TD and 1 pt. per 10 yards.

The first thing I noticed was the five #2 WRs that made the list.
Brett Perriman, DET, 1995 (34th)
Cris Carter, MIN, 1999 (43rd), 2000 (93rd)
Torry Holt, STL, 2000 (49th)
Ed McCaffery, DEN, 2000 (77th)

Initially, I made a graph of WR #1 points vs. WR #2 points that included the 5 cases mentioned above. After getting results that showed no correlation, I decided to throw those 5 cases out, since they could be skewing the data. We are looking at the #1 WR here, not the #2. This graph also showed a poor correlation with an R^2 value of just 0.002. An R^2 value of 1 gives a perfect correlation. A value of 0.002 says that the #2 WR's points are about 0.2% of the reason for the #1 WR's points. Basically, there is no relationship between the two

Here are graphs of just the top 30 and top 40. You'll see that there is still no correlation.



My final conclusion is that quality of the #2 WR really doesn’t necessarily help nor hinder the #1 WR. The best seasons by a #1 have seen great seasons by the #2 and horrible seasons by the #2. For a specific WR, there may be some correlation. You'd have to inspect that WR in particular, and formulate a reason why he is affected. In general, you can ignore the quality of the #2 WR when deciding how well the elite WR will do. My theory on why we don't see any correlation: the best WRs are good enough to get open despite double teams. They are also good enough to command most of the passes in their offense. If the #2 WR is horrible, then the passes will go to the elite WR despite the increased coverage. If the #2 WR is good enough to draw coverage away from the #1 WR, then he must also be stealing catches.