With the doldrums of the summer often come a deep dive into advanced football statistics. Football Outsiders in particularly likes to analyze a variety of numbers around this time each year to find interesting trends or performances from the prior season.
This week, FO broke down their YAC+ metric, which measures a player’s production after the catch. It’s similar to yards after the catch per reception, or simply YAC, but adjusts that value relative to expected values. Here’s the official description:
YAC+ ... estimates how much YAC a receiver gained compared to what we would have expected from an average receiver catching passes of similar length in similar down-and-distance situations.