Is Something Wrong With Reggie Brown?

Through four games this season, Reggie Brown has been the invisible man.  He has only eight receptions for 81 yards, with no touchdowns.  He's behind Jason Avant (10/130/1) in all three of those categories.

It's not just the stats.  In three of the first four games there have been times when it seemed the Eagles receivers were struggling to get open.  I think those concerns have been overblown, but no matter what, the production just hasn't been there.  So what's going on?

The first point is that Reggie Brown ... may not have the track record Eagles fans think he does.  Don't get me wrong, I love the guy.  He's a gamer, he doesn't draw attention to himself like so many other receivers do, and he's one of the best blocking wide receivers in the league.  (And none of that has changed this year, by the way.) 

But last year his stats weren't really that great.  He had 46 catches, 816 yards and eight touchdowns.  Those aren't bad numbers, but 66 players caught more balls last year than he did.  Not counting the last game when the starters played just one series before being pulled for safekeeping, Reggie averaged only 3.1 catches per game.

That's a far cry from the output of the league's truly elite receivers.  The top 10 wide receivers last year averaged about 5.8 receptions / game.  (The number is actually a little higher, but I'm just assuming a 16-game season for each guy.)  The next 10 guys caught 4.8 balls per game.  And numbers 21-30 averaged 4.1 rec/game.  Based solely on his production so far, Reggie really isn't in the same league as those guys yet. 

Now you may argue that the Eagles run a spread-it-around offense that cuts down on his touches.  That's certainly true, but four of the top 10 receivers are team pairs Reggie Wayne / Marvin Harrison and Chad Johnson / T.J. Hoshamazode. 

You can also say that Brian Westbrook gets a lot more passes than the average back, but Reggie Bush caught more balls than he did last year and Marques Colston still managed 70 receptions. 

And we should never forget that when the Eagles had a truly top-shelf wide receiver on the field, there was no question about whether or not he'd be getting the ball each week.

The second point is that Reggie wasn't the number one receiver last year, and he may not be the number one guy this year.  Reggie accumulated about half of his stats last year in the five games when Stallworth either didn't play or was hobbled.  During the 10 games when both guys played, Donte was clearly the primary option:

I can't find the cite at the moment, but I read somewhere that Ron Jaworski claimed last week that the Lions were rolling their coverage to Reggie Brown and daring Kevin Curtis to beat them.  It seems strange if it's true, but maybe other teams are treating Reggie as the team's number one threat.  Based on the numbers in that chart, that may or may not be justified. 

I hesitate to make the third point, because I know it's going to be misinterpreted by some, but based just on the numbers, there does seem to perhaps be a quarterback effect here as well:

I've also got the chart for just the 10 games Reggie played with McNabb last year, if you want to do an apples-to-apples comparison with Garcia (I've removed the game where both Garcia and McNabb played):

Any way you slice it, Reggie doesn't get as many balls when McNabb is under center.  And what's especially strange about the 2006 comparison is that McNabb threw 33.7 passes per game last year vs. only 28.1 for Garcia.  So even though there were five more balls per game being spread around, Reggie was still ending up with about one fewer catch per game with McNabb. 

And that's despite the fact that all five of Reggie's non-Stallworth games came with McNabb.  Look at those numbers again.  In the five games without Stallworth, Reggie got the ball all the time.  But in the four games when Donte was on the field, Donovan only looked his way five times total.  This split suggests that the most obvious reason for why his numbers go down with McNabb -- he can't catch 5's passes that well -- probably isn't the whole story.      

Now this is generally the point where I'd consider all the evidence at hand and make some sort of sweeping prediction for why everything is going to be all right.  But this year?  I'm not so sure any more.   

All I know is that with Westbrook, McNabb and LJ all not being at full strength, it's time for someone to step up and make some plays.

Comments

[Wilbert Montgomery]

Interesting analysis. I think it is worth noting (and maybe even looking at the numbers) that McNabb is a much better spread it around QB than Garcia was. Also, McNabb really likes to involve his tight-ends in the offense. I remember thinking last year that Garcia was not very good at that but don't have numbers to back it up. I think you'll find LJs numbers suffered with Garcia in last year - maybe to Brown's benefit.

I agree with Andy that spreading the ball around makes the offense more dangerous and much harder to defend and prepare for. However, I disagree with Andy the not blocking pro-bowl defensive ends is a good was to free-up an extra man.

[roccarooter]

we are talking about receptions here and not looks right? it would probably shed more light on the subject if we could know how many looks reggie gets from 5 vs. garcia.

[Me]

That would be awesome. Once you go through all of that last year's play-by-play to pull out those stats, let me know what you find :)

[BountyBowl]

Yeah, I wonder what the Football Outsiders Premium DB would tell us about this. That is, what could we learn about his catch rate from 5 versus Garcia, and what might we see about his performance in different alignments and formations. That is, did the Birds run more multiple TE/ running sets with Garcia, with fewer receivers running routes and thus a higher chance for him to make plays?

Nice post.