The Temperment Of A Wide Out

Wide Receivers in the NFL tend to have a reputation of being loud mouth guys. See: Terrell Owens, Keyshawn Johnson. Many wide outs just seem to "want the ball" and the media makes a big deal whenever receivers are yelling at their QB whenever they're open. But this only seems to happen with wide receivers. TE don't really complain about not catching passes and RB rarely complain about getting carries. So why is it that wide receivers are the only ones complaining?

On average, an offensive gets the ball about 60-70 times a game. On a normal team, RBs will get about 25-30 carries and QB will throw the ball about 30-40 times. This assuming you're not on a team like the Chicago Bears or the the Pittsburgh Steelers where backs can get about 30-40 carries and QBs can get about 20-25 attempts. And out off all those attempts, good QBs only make about 60-65% of their passes. So out of 30+ attempts, only about 19 attempts are caught. And those caught passes are getting distributed to at least four guys. Which means wide receivers actually catch the ball very little. If you're a great WR who gets 100+ catches, you still only catch the ball about 8 times a game. The best receivers only contributes to about 12% of plays. That means, on 88% of plays, wide receivers do not directly contribute the play- and that most likely means the WR has to go down the fields and block for another receiver or for the RB.

All this is assuming above average offensives. The Bears QBs in recent years only made about 50% of their passes and only threw it about 20-30 times a game. That means only about 12 passes are actually caught per game. Distribute that number between abut 4 receivers and a wide out only catches about 4 passes per game. Last year Devin Hester only caught 51 passes- that's only 3.2 catches per game!

So when you think about it, most of the time WRs are throwing blocks or attempting to catch passes instead of actually catching a pass. If you're a stud wide receiver, you're doing very little of what you enjoy doing- and that's catching passes. And because you catch so little passes relative to a team's offense, you seem to have every right to get upset at you're QB if he misses you when you're wide open. Now, you don't need to criticize the QB every chance you get (T.O!) but I do think if you want to be a successful WR in the NFL, you do have to "want to catch the ball on every play" and you do need SOME fire that sports analysts seem to criticize wide outs for. Now you obviously can be a successful receiver without throwing a hissy fit every play (Jerry Rice, Marvin Harrison) but I do think that T.O. sometimes has at least a LITTLE point whenever he gets upset (But obviously tearing teams apart like Dallas and Philly are just unacceptable).

So the next time you see a wide receiver yelling at someone on the sidelines, I want you to step in his shoes for a second before you judge him.

SIDENOTE: Because of all the stats and whatnot I just mentioned about receivers catching the ball so few times per game, in fantasy football, whenever I have a WR/RB position, I always try to fill it with a RB. RB are almost guarantee to get carries and even if the back sucks , the back can still carry the ball a lot to produce good fantasy numbers (One of the best examples of this is during the Indy/Green Bay game last year. Ryan Grant had good fantasy numbers: 105 yards and a TD, but also had 31 carries and a shitty 3.4 YPC). Having the guarantee to hold the ball on many downs can go a long way in fantasy.