Greg Peshek of secondroundstats.com does a great job of charting college football metrics and on Wednesday, he released the 2013 drop rate percentages for several of the top wide receivers in the 2014 draft class on Twitter.
Peshek also stated on Twitter that he only counts passes that he deemed as easy catches as drops, so now you know his level of subjectivity. He goes on to say that by grading drops that way, quarterback quality shouldn’t factor into the numbers.
As far as his previous studies on drops, Peshek states that a low drop rate doesn’t necessarily mean a receiver will have good hands in NFL. However, he does add that receivers with bad hands almost never got better at the next level.
As far as the drop percentages that you see below go, Peshek deems a number between 6-9% as being questionable and any percentage higher than that as being a red flag.
If you are curious about the drops the Florida State wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin had in 2013, I recently dedicated an entire post to that subject complete with animated gifs.
Was asked about drop rates for some WRs I hadn’t published, here’s a full list of every WR I charted this year pic.twitter.com/7l3e1Q8e10
— Greg Peshek (@NU_Gap) April 23, 2014
From my own studies, low drop rate doesn’t necessarily mean good hands in NFL, but bad hands almost never got better in transition to NFL
— Greg Peshek (@NU_Gap) April 23, 2014
Greg Peshek 2013 College WR Drop Rates
| Player | College | Drop % |
|---|---|---|
| *Martavis Bryant | Clemson | 12.50% |
| *Marqise Lee | Southern California | 12.31% |
| L’Damian Washington | Missouri | 12.07% |
| *Donte Moncrief | Ole Miss | 11.11% |
| *Kelvin Benjamin | Florida State | 9.68% |
| *Paul Richardson | Colorado | 8.89% |
| Jalen Saunders | Oklahoma | 7.94% |
| Jordan Matthews | Vanderbilt | 7.69% |
| *Odell Beckham Jr. | LSU | 6.45% |
| *Allen Robinson | Penn State | 5.43% |
| *Brandin Cooks | Oregon State | 4.69% |
| *Sammy Watkins | Clemson | 4.49% |
| *Mike Evans | Texas A&M | 4.29% |
| *Jarvis Landry | LSU | 2.50% |
