On Monday, NFL.com’s Nick Snook published an article highlighting the Next Gen Stats CROE (Catch Rate Over Expectation) metric — which he explained like this:
[This statistic] measures the difficulty of completion using a number of factors, including separation from nearest defender, depth of target and speed. The players who qualify for this list and boast higher CROEs have consistently made difficult, unlikely catches more often than the rest. These are the ones who you can count on to make the tough grabs.
So for each individual target for every receiver, NGS calculates the probability a pass will be caught.