College Football Best Bets of the Week: Week 9
Walter Waddell
You may remember that a year ago, I introduced a new concept called Route DVOA. I’ve been doing receiving DVOA for over 20 years, but it’s always been based on value per target. Route DVOA is based on value per routes run, which accounts for the skill of getting open and earning targets. It’s probably a better measurement of receiver quality and it’s definitely more consistent and predictive from year to year.
We don’t yet have all our methods streamlined enough to update Route DVOA automatically after each week’s games, but I have been putting it together once I get the FTN Data charting of routes run. My plan was to share the numbers with all of you readers every few weeks, so let’s do our first data dump for this season.
There are a couple of ways to look at these stats. We’ve got Route DVOA, or value per route. We’ve got Route DYAR, or total value based on routes. The player ranks are closer than they are for normal receiving DVOA, but not exactly the same. We can also look at the difference between a player’s regular receiving DVOA and his Route DVOA. To do this, I use z-scores, because Route DVOA has a wider scale than regular receiving DVOA. Z-scores look at the difference in standard deviations over average for each metric.
First, here’s a look at the top wide receivers in Route DYAR value. Route DVOA and standard receiving DYAR are both here for comparison purposes.
| Player | Team | Route DYAR |
Rank | Route DVOA |
Rank | DYAR | Routes |
| Drake London | ATL | 316 | 1 | 63.8% | 6 | 156 | 233 |
| Justin Jefferson | MIN | 295 | 2 | 75.6% | 3 | 173 | 190 |
| Nico Collins | HOU | 283 | 3 | 92.5% | 2 | 175 | 154 |
| Chris Godwin | TB | 275 | 4 | 48.8% | 12 | 195 | 251 |
| Amon-Ra St. Brown | DET | 261 | 5 | 72.1% | 4 | 130 | 170 |
| Ja’Marr Chase | CIN | 233 | 6 | 38.4% | 18 | 226 | 249 |
| Brian Thomas Jr. | JAX | 221 | 7 | 51.0% | 9 | 163 | 192 |
| Malik Nabers | NYG | 217 | 8 | 53.7% | 8 | 41 | 189 |
| George Pickens | PIT | 200 | 9 | 50.9% | 10 | 53 | 183 |
| Rashee Rice | KC | 193 | 10 | 107.4% | 1 | 108 | 87 |
| Terry McLaurin | WAS | 189 | 11 | 41.3% | 16 | 110 | 197 |
| Jauan Jennings | SF | 185 | 12 | 60.2% | 7 | 140 | 142 |
London is a good example of a player who gets a boost in these Route DVOA stats because he draws targets. He’s currently fourth in the league with 62 targets.
Nabers is a good example of a player who gets an even bigger boost in these Route DVOA stats because he is such a large part of the offense when he is on the field.
Chase, surprisingly, is about the same in both Route DYAR and regular DYAR so far this season. He leads the NFL in regular DYAR, but not in Route DYAR.
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