Andre Johnson…still the best!

Don’t let statisticians like ESPN’s KC Joyner fool you. Andre Johnson remains the best wide receiver in football—unquestioned.

If you believe KC Joyner’s piece on ESPN.com (insider account required), you will come to the conclusion that Miles Austin is the best wide receiver in football—right now! Hell, even Eric Karabell was somewhat willing to jump on the bandwagon.

However, TheSportsWatchers won’t let you fall for the madness. While Austin’s season was spectacular, there’s no way anybody knows whether he’s going to reproduce at that level of 1,320 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns again this season. So before the clock starts ticking on your 2010 fantasy football draft, make sure you understand why Andre Johnson is indeed the best wide receiver in football, and why he should be the first wideout you take off your board.

First, let me get the facts out of the way. Austin had a very good season once he stepped into the limelight last year. When you compare Austin’s numbers to Andre Johnson’s, Austin had more yards per reception, more touchdown receptions and a higher “success percentage” than Andre Johnson had last year. Austin also beat Johnson in several high-level statistics, all of which you can see via the article link to Joyner’s piece.

However, the problem with all of Joyner’s high-level analysis is that they don’t mean anything unless you fully analyze them. For example, Miles Austin beats Andre Johnson by more than 50% in Short Route Yards Per Attempt. However, what you can’t gather from that stat is that the Cowboys loved running screen passes for Austin, and they ran them exceptionally well. The fact that Austin was in non-bump-and-run coverage often enough to get as many screen passes as he did, should also speak volumes to the kind of coverage he saw throughout the season. Meanwhile, Johnson was getting jammed at the line so often that the option to run screen passes was minimal–to say the least.

Joyner also uses a statistic that measures how well wide receivers faired against three different levels of cornerbacks. Austin averaged more yards per attempt than Johnson against elite, mid-level and poor cornerbacks, getting a clean sweep against the myriad of competition—statistically speaking. However, what this stat doesn’t tell is how often the corner back had help over the top, whether the wide receiver faced man coverage or zone, or what kind of routes each team preferred to run against certain types of corners. Inherently, any statistic in football that measures one-on-one competition is going to have its holes, and the measure of a wide receiver versus a cornerback is full of them.

As for the major stats we mentioned at the top of this piece, like yards per catch, touchdown passes and success percentage, it’s easy to explain those. In terms of yards per catch, Austin may indeed be a better runner after the catch, but the fact that he was a little known player for the majority of year last year allowed him to see much softer coverage than Johnson ever saw. And as for the touchdowns, I’ll give Austin full credit for that—he produced in the end zone. I will say this, Andre Johnson barely gets any looks inside the red zone, because teams take him out of the play immediately. Austin, on the other hand, isn’t even the best red zone option on his team, with TE Jason Witten often drawing double coverage near the goal line. There’s no question in my mind that it was Witten’s presence that resulted in the additional 2 touchdowns that Austin had over Johnson.

Now I will admit Joyner was at least able to bring specific numbers to the table; whereas my analysis was somewhat subjective and relied on what I saw over several games throughout the course of the season. Unfortunately, I don’t have access the exact numbers that detail how many times Johnson saw double-coverage or how many more screen passes Austin had thrown his way. But I trust that if you too were to go back and look at last year’s games, you would also come to the conclusion that the stats won’t tell the entire story when it comes to comparing Austin and Johnson.

That being said, from a fantasy football perspective, there is one stat that Johnson beats Austin in for sure: fantasy football points.

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