Tyler Lockett’s three-year, $31.8 million extension prior to the season came as something of a surprise.
Coming off a season-ending injury in 2016, Lockett was hampered in 2017, setting career lows in yards per reception and yards per game along with more advanced per-target measures. Lockett’s in-game speed as measured by the NFL’s player tracking data was also substantially slower in 2017 than 2016 (those are the only two years for which tracking data was available to the public).
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When the Seahawks extended Lockett, they were making a bet that his 2017 season was an injury-related aberration. And boy, have they ever been proven right. Lockett has returned to his 2015 level of efficiency, and perhaps even exceeded it. Here’s the visual of Lockett’s career to date, including his meteoric rise in 2018:
The figure on the left shows per-target Expected Points Added (EPA) per play. The NFL average EPA across all plays is zero, by construction. On plays where a pass is attempted, the average is about 0.20, because a pass attempt means that the offense hasn’t been sacked, committed a penalty, or called a run play.
While Lockett’s efficiency has been above average every season, it was sky-high in his 2015 debut and has returned there – and beyond – in 2018. He is also being targeted at the highest rate in his career, as measured by the percent of Seahawks pass attempts targeting Lockett (figure on the right).
The Numbers
Yards per target
Let’s start with something simple: Yards per target. Here are the top 10 receivers in yards per target this season (minimum 50 targets, with thanks to Pro Football Reference):
Several things jump out here. The first is Lockett’s place on this list, leading the league in yards per target through Week 12. In fact, the last player to top 12.0 yards per target over a full season was DeSean Jackson in 2014. Lockett’s numbers are especially high on play-action passes targeting him, with 14 catches on 15 pass attempts for 292 yards and 5 touchdowns, per PFF’s John Kosko, which works out to an outrageous 19.5 yards per attempt and 33 percent touchdown rate.
Going back to the list above, there are three different Rams players (Cooks, Kupp, and Woods), which isn’t surprising given how good their offense has been. There’s also two Buccaneers players (Evans and Jackson), highlighting how weird their season has been.
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Finally, there’s a lot of variation in target volume here, ranging from Gronkowski, Kupp, and Lockett in the 50s to several players approaching 100 targets or more. Because of the differences in targets, quarterback play, and roles in their offenses, we shouldn’t be using this table to say that Tyler Lockett is a better receiver than the Julio Joneses and Michael Thomases of the world, especially given how noisy per-target stats in a given year can be.
But still. Look at Lockett!
Fun with Expected Points Added
Let’s take a look at a measure that rewards receivers for both their per-target efficiency and the number of targets earned. Below shows the top 10 receivers which have cumulatively added the most Expected Points on their targets this season. More targets means more opportunities to rack up Expected Points, but only to the extent that those targets are efficient. Here’s the list:
Lockett slots in at No. 9 on this volume statistic despite having substantially fewer targets than any other receiver listed. In fact, the next player on the list with fewer than 60 targets would be Sammy Watkins with 36.4 EPA, No. 19 in the league. The reason Lockett has added so much value on relatively few targets is his per-target efficiency, where his 0.90 EPA per target leads the league among players with at least 25 targets.
In fact, as shown in the table above, Seattle’s offense has added 48.7 Expected Points on 54 Tyler Lockett targets. On the Seahawks’ other 654 plays, they’ve only added 10.7 Expected Points (if you’re wondering at this stage why the Seahawks don’t throw to Lockett more, we’ll get to that).
If you’ve been reading my weekly EPA recap pieces, you’ve probably noticed how often Lockett has been featured in the rundown of each game’s biggest plays. Against the Panthers, he had two of the top eight plays, adding 6.5 points on those plays. Let’s take another look at those two plays.
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Big cushions, but still gets open
NFL Next Gen Stats measure the cushion that players receive at the snap using their player tracking data, and Lockett receives the sixth-biggest in the league – 7 yards, on average – up there with other speedsters such as Phillip Dorsett and DeSean Jackson. Looking over the Panthers game, it’s apparent why he ranks so high. Here’s the game-deciding catch that would put the Seahawks in position to kick the go-ahead field goal:
With Lockett on the outside, the defender lined up across from him gives about an eight yard cushion. When the play breaks down, Lockett is able to get downfield to haul in the Russell Wilson bomb.
Here’s the Lockett touchdown:
Working from the inside, Lockett does a great job finding space to sit in the zone, allowing Wilson to find him for the touchdown.
Conclusion
Given how effective Seattle’s offense has been when throwing to Lockett, the big question is why he hasn’t been getting more targets. Even accounting for Seattle’s low volume passing offense, Lockett has been on the receiving end of fewer than 20 percent of Wilson’s pass attempts.
While I can only speculate, my guess is that – for whatever reason – Wilson only feels comfortable targeting Lockett on certain high-value plays, and other receivers get the bulk of the Jermaine Kearse Memorial low-probability desperation throws.
Lockett may remain the high efficiency, low volume receiver we’ve seen in his two fully healthy seasons (2015 and 2018). One can look at this in one of two ways. The glass half full view is that it could be possible for Lockett to retain his high efficiency numbers when typically we’d typically expect regression. The glass half empty view is that he might not ever become a player who demands a high share of his team targets. Given Seattle’s philosophy on offense, that probably suits the team just fine.
(Top photo: Ron Chenoy/USA Today)