I didn't say they should replace them for their entire careers or the entire season: I said Cobb needed to be benched to recover from his injury and Adams needed to be benched to get his head together.
Also, I'm not exaggerating about Adams' struggles, since I didn't write the article.
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers has targeted Adams 64 times this year, and Adams has caught just 32 of those passes. We've seen worse catch rates than that among higher-volume receivers, to be clear, but most of the wideouts who see that low of catch rates also have accumulated high yards per reception averages. In other words, they're deep ball threats -- their catch rates are lower because they're seeing lower percentage throws.
Adams isn't one of those deep ball guys, as he has a 10.1 yards per reception average right now. Since targets started being recorded back in 1992, per Pro Football Reference, only 17 wide receivers have averaged 11 or fewer yards per reception with a 50% (or worse) catch rate while seeing 60 or more targets in a season.
Davante Adams is one of those players.
And among this group of 17 -- remember, these are guys who have caught 50% or fewer of their targets while seeing 60 or more targets -- Adams' 10.1 yards per reception rate is fifth worst.
Predictably, this has translated to our advanced analytics. Since the turn of the century, 1,198 wide receivers have caught 30 or more passes, excluding this season. In terms of Reception NEP per target -- our per-target efficiency metric -- Davante Adams' current campaign would rank 1,186th within the group.
But you could actually argue that Adams is having -- pretty easily, too -- the worst season our database has ever seen. Because, as you know, poor wide receiver play often has a lot to do with quarterback performance, too.
And when you look at the wide receiver situations among the guys ranked below Adams, it's very clear -- and I mean very clear -- that Adams is in the best situation of them all. Take a look at the chart below which depicts each of these wide receivers, as well as the individual wideout's team schedule-adjusted Passing NEP per drop back average that season.
He averaged 5.19 yards per target that year. That's all-time bad. No other Packers receiver since 1992 has averaged below 6.0 ypc. The only one who even averaged below
7.0 was Greg Jennings in his rookie year during the catastrophic 2006 season...and he still averaged nearly a full yard (about 20%) more at 6.07.
People tend to forget
just how bad the receivers, particularly Davante, were in 2015 because he's rebounded since.
