The Sam Howell Thread

[mooby]

Just peering into the stats a bit trying to figure out why Terry Mac is in a funk - he's dropping more passes than typical this year and he looks out of sync with Sam.

First thing I see is Terry Mac has 60 catches on 97 targets. He's by far Sam's most targeted receiver (next highest is Dotson with 69 targets) and yet for whatever reason that catch rate is abysmal compared to our other receivers.

Terry - 60/97 (catches/targets)
C. Samuel - 47/63
Dotson - 42/69
Logan T - 45/62
B.Rob - 29/36
A. Gibson - 33/39
Dyami Brown - 11/21

Now obviously Sam loves to spread the ball around - we have 11 different players who have received at least 14 targets. But Terry has 97! targets (still lower than league leading receivers like Tyreek Hill/Ceedee Lamb) and only 60 catches for 694 yards, which is half what Hill has.

Just for comparison - top 5 receivers by stats this year:

Tyreek Hill: 88 rec, 120 targets, 1324 yards, 10 td's
Ceedee Lamb: 90 catches, 121 targets, 1182 yards, 7 td's
Keenan Allen: 97 catches, 129 targets, 1117 yards, 7 td's
A.J. Brown: 73 catches, 105 targets, 1050 yards, 7 td's
DJ Moore: 70 catches, 93 targets, 1003 yards, 6 td's
....
Terry Mac: 60 catches, 97 targets, 694 yards, 2 td's

He's having a down year and I can't tell if it's because he's out of sync with Sam Howell or if he's playing hurt, or if it's Bieniemy's scheme. But something's off. I don't want to say it's because Howell throws inaccurate passes (he does on occasion, but Howell also has a 66% completion rate which is pretty good). But there's definitely room for improvement. Terry's long for the season is 36 yards too which isn't great.

Going into a bit of a deeper dive (thanks to PFR) historically Terry's YPC looks like this: 15.8, 12.9, 13.7, 15.5 - this year it's 11.6 which would be a new low for him. His catch rate for 2023 is 61.9% which apparently is not far off his career average of 62.5%. Compared to the greats though it's not in the same level - Tyreek Hill's career average is 68.7%, Stefon Diggs' career average is 69% (nice), Travis Kelce's career average is 71.6%.

Terry's yards after catch per reception is down as well - historically it was 3.7yac/r, 5.5, 4.1, 5.1, but this year it's 3.4. He also has tied his career high for drops in a season with 5 this year and we still have 5 games left. His percentage of drops this year is also higher than ever - 5.2 this year compared to 4.3, 2.2, 3.8, and 2.5 in 2022.

TL;DR: Statistically he's having a down year as well. Not a huge deal seeing as how this is a wasted year anyways but if we are to be better next year he needs to regain his playmaking form. His yards after catch was always a big part of his game but this year it's almost nonexistant. He's always had good hands but this year he's on rate to drop more passes than ever. And obviously the glaring stats - he hasn't had a dominant game in over a year - every elite WR has at least one every year. We need more from him.