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A.J. Green a ruthlessly reliable, efficient playmaker

By Kevin Parvizi

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Injuries limited Cincinnati Bengals superstar wide receiver A.J. Green to 13 games, and they were the sole reason for him missing out on a 70-catch season, as he finished the year with 69 receptions after catching over 90 passes in 2012 and 2013. He missed more than just three games, too, because he was a clear decoy at times and left other contests early with an injury. While Green wasn’t able to rack up huge counting stats, he still passed the 1,000-yard mark on the strength of 15.1 yards per reception, and he did average 80 yards per game for a third season in a row.

Andy Dalton isn’t known for his arm strength, but he had two legit playmaking receivers in Green and slight breakout player Mohamed Sanu, as both averaged more than 14 yards per catch in 2014. Green was obviously the highlight of the Bengals passing offense for another season running, and he might be the most efficient big-play threat in the NFL. Like most No. 1 receivers, he’s more than just a guy who can make big plays, but it’s almost ridiculous how he blends excellent route-running, solid hands, a ridiculous catch radius, and game-breaking speed into an all-important beast in the Bengals offense.

Green was one of 21 players to average at least 15 yards per reception last season, but only DeAndre Hopkins and Dez Bryant had better drop rates, per Pro Football Focus. The former Georgia standout dropped four passes in 2014, and he didn’t drop a single pass that traveled over 20 yards downfield.

In fact, Green was so good at coming down with deep passes that of the nine of his 24 deep targets that were deemed “catchable” by PFF, he caught every single one of those “catchable” passes for 372 yards and four touchdowns. He isn’t the only receiver to haul in all of his “catchable” deep targets (there are plenty, including Dallas Cowboys beast Dez Bryant), but it’s an impressive feat nonetheless.

It’s hard to overstate Green’s importance in the Bengals offense, especially since the two losses to the Indianapolis Colts are prime examples of the offenses’s ineptitude without him. Even with a great rookie running back in Jeremy Hill starting in their Wild Card game, the Bengals offense could get nothing going, thought that had plenty to do with Hill’s lack of carries and Dalton’s inability to move the offense.

However, that latter statement tells you most of what you need to know about Green’s value to this team, since, as you can see by his own yards per reception, generating consistent yardage down the field wasn’t an issue for the Bengals with Green and his massive size/athleticism roaming the field. This is a guy who never caught less than three passes in a game when healthy, and he surpassed 50 receiving yards in ten of 13 games as Dalton’s all-too-obvious “bro” in the passing game.

Green averaged nine yards per target last season, and he was just one of three players to have more than forty targets. Jermaine Gresham was thrown at 80 times, Sanu 105, and Green 116. Per Advanced Football Analytics, 37.1% of his targets were at least 15 yards downfield, so he was the team’s go-to receiver and go-to playmaker rolled up into one. Sanu averaged 7.8 yards per target, including the playoffs, but he was the only player who came to close to Green in that department.

But Green’s sub-60% catch rate, which, by extension, lowers his yards per target, is largely the result of Dalton’s desperation throws in his direction. We saw Green go down with injuries on two of those types of throws, and it’s important to try to minimize the effect of these throws, as No. 1 receivers’s efficiency stats decrease because of these “chucks” from their QBs. PFF’s yards per route run does a great job of this by replacing targets with routes run, and no wide receiver had a higher yards per route run than Green last season, and this underscores his ruthless efficiency.

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We tend to think of “efficiency” as a basketball adjective, and we usually associate it with quarterbacks and running backs in the NFL. But with stats like catch rate, yards per target, drop rate, yards per reception, and yards per route run, there’s plenty of importance stressed on wide receivers. Can they make the offense more efficient by getting open, not dropping passes, making touch catches, and turning short gains into big plays?

Green did all of those things and more, as he forced ten missed tackles, dropped just four passes, averaged nine yards per target, and got more yards out of his routes than any other wideout in the 2014 season. The Bengals looked to Green so often that Sanu was 39th out of 50 qualifiers in yards per route run despite averaging a solid 7.8 yards per target, and that’s because Dalton spent so much of his time keying in on the Georgia wideout.

You can only imagine how many yards per target Green would have averaged- what with his 15.1 yards per catch and all- if Dalton were better at spreading the ball around. With Marvin Jones and Tyler Eifert set to return from injuries next season, that could easily be the case next season. Gresham, his huge 77.9% catch rate, and quietly good pass blocking will most likely exit in free agency, but the Jones and Eifert returns could even out the target distribution for the Bengals.

That would decrease A.J. Green’s chances of matching the 1,426 yards he hit in 2013, but it would allow him to shine even more in the analytics department, which could somewhat make up for the drop in target percentage. Green is so good that we don’t even need numbers to understand his brilliance, because all we need to do is tune into a Bengals game with him playing and check out how this offense does without him. But if you do look at the right numbers, you’ll see that there are few receivers who are more efficient, especially when it comes to being a safety valve and big-play threat.

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