Classifying WRs, TEs, and RBs by Where They Catch the Ball

Abstract
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a useful tool to simplify complex datasets. The results of the PCA can be then used either to reconstruct the original data or to classify it into different groups. In this post I apply PCA to reception data for a sample of 150+ NFL receivers. I find that PCA generally does a good job of discriminating between wide receivers, tight ends, and running backs. A few tight ends, however – generally ones known more for their use as receivers than blockers – have significant overlap with the wide receivers. This result indicates that PCA may be useful for determining how to designate players, Jimmy Graham for example, for the franchise tag.

Introduction

Alright, so I lied. Well, partially – I am very busy with job applications, but I've also been teaching myself some new machine learning techniques (mostly from this excellent textbook) and they're just so damn cool that it's been hard not to think of ways to apply them to NFL data.

One of these methods is called Principal Component Analysis (PCA for short), and it's designed to reduce a large, complex dataset down into its most important pieces. These pieces (the 'component' part of PCA) can be used as basis functions to reconstruct the original data with minimal information loss, providing a form of data compression. Or, the coefficients for a given component can be compared between all the observations in a dataset, and trends in these coefficients may be used to classify the data into groups.

One of the great things about PCA is that it relies on no assumptions about how the data are distributed. This means that PCA can be used on just about anything. Something that is especially appropriate for a PCA is the distribution of yardage gained by a player every time they touch the ball. Credit where credit is due: the analysis in this post is partly inspired by Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats, who looked at the distribution of yards gained (or lost) on rush attempts in an effort to distinguish between power running backs and smaller, faster RBs. Burke (largely visually) compared the raw yardage histograms, and found that there were only small differences between each type of back. Burke suggests using a gamma distribution to parameterize these gains, although given the distinct rush distribution for each player he shows it seems unlikely that every running back will be well-represented by such a (relatively) simple model (to his credit Burke himself is quite upfront about this). PCA allows us to produce accurate representations of such data without choosing a distribution a priori, which means we don't have to worry about limiting or biasing ourselves by such a decision.

For this post I'll apply PCA to reception statistics rather than rush attempts. One reason for my choice is that Burke's analysis (despite the limitations I mentioned earlier) is pretty thorough, and I prefer to break new ground when I can. The other (more interesting) reason is that while most rush attempts come from a single position group (RBs), the target for a pass attempt can be a WR, TE, or RB. So in addition to looking for differences between possession receivers and home run threats it's also possible to see how the different positions are utilized on passing plays.

Data and Model

I queried my copy of the Armchair Analysis database (which spans the 2000-2011 seasons) and grabbed the yardage gained from every reception for each player with 200+ catches in the database. (I impose this reception threshold to ensure that statistical noise doesn't dominate the data.) The final sample consists of 114 wide receivers, 37 tight ends, and 33 running backs. The reception distribution of the total dataset is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Distribution of all receptions in the sample. It has a strong peak at a gain of around 7-10 yards, with a long tail showing big passing plays. 

I next computed the reception distribution for each player, then ran the PCA. The details of exactly how PCA works are beyond the scope of this blog, but I'll give a brief overview of the method here so that at least the general concept is (hopefully) clear.

First off, each player's reception distribution is normalized so receivers with more catches don't bias the analysis, and the mean yardage distribution for the whole dataset is subtracted. From this point the algorithm gets to work, computing a function which minimizes the variation in the residual data. This process is repeated, and each successive iteration accounts for more and more of the fine details of the dataset. Eventually (when the number of iterations approaches the number of players in the sample) the PCA will perfectly reproduce the original data. Of course, that sort of exact duplication isn't the point of PCA; rather since the most variation is explained by the first components, the goal is to truncate the algorithm after only N iterations, where N is much smaller than the number of players in the dataset.

The script I wrote to do this analysis can be found here. It's a fairly long program, but a large chunk of it is just to make the diagnostic plots to show how well the PCA worked – the meat of the PCA happens between lines 107-115.

Results

Figure 2: The first four components of the PCA as a function of reception yards. The first component is the average of all the players, while subsequent components have been computed by the PCA algorithm. Components beyond the second and third are very jagged, signs that they are fitting individual player variation rather than useful information.

I ran the PCA on the reception data to N = 15, but a look at the first four components (Figure 2) indicates that after the first couple of iterations the PCA is mostly fitting differences in the reception distributions for individual players. I can prove (hopefully) this to you via Figure 3.

Figure 3: Sample PCA reconstruction for Anquan Boldin, showing both the original reception distribution (in black) and a reconstruction using the first three PCA components (red). The reconstruction generally does a good job of mimicking the data even with only three components.

In addition to providing the maximal reduction in variance, the PCA also provides a list of coefficients for each component. These coefficients can be used with the components to produce a reconstruction of the original data – in the case of Figure 3, for Anquan Boldin. You can see that just the first three PCA components are required to recover a fairly good representation of Boldin's catch distribution – consistent with what the shape of the components indicated in Figure 2.

Now that we have verified that the PCA is working as intended, we can get to the good stuff – using the PCA to differentiate between players. As I mentioned earlier the data contain WRs, TEs, and RBs. A plot of the coefficients of the first PCA component (PCA1), color-coded by player position, is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: The distribution of the first PCA coefficient. Note how WRs are cleanly separated from RBs, while TEs partially overlap with WRs. 

This figure is quite striking – running backs all cluster with (relatively) large coefficients, while nearly every wide receiver has negative values for PCA1. Tight ends tend to fall in the middle, although there is substantial overlap with the wideouts. What this means is that there is something inherently different about where each position grouping tends to catch the ball (and by extension, what routes they run). This is not inherently surprising, given it's fairly easy to see this just by watching how players at the different positions move during a game.

Discussion and Conclusions

What is interesting, however, is the fact that tight ends and wide receivers aren't as cleanly separated from each other as they are from running backs. In fact, while TEs and WRs are clearly not drawn from the same distribution, there is definitely some overlap. This implies that some TEs are being used more like wideouts. Additional evidence for this hypothesis comes from looking at which tight ends are most and least 'wide receiver-like'. Table 1 lists the top and bottom five TEs, sorted by PCA1.

Table 1: Tight Ends with Extreme PCA1 Values

Most WR-like		Least WR-like
Name	PCA1	Name	PCA1
Owen Daniels	-3.8x10-2	Steve Heiden	6.8x10-2
Antonio Gates	-2.9x10-2	Donald Lee	5.2x10-2
Tony Gonzalez	-2.4x10-2	Bubba Franks	4.6x10-2
Marcedes Lewis	-1.4x10-2	Eric Johnson	3.9x10-2
Tony Scheffler	-7.8x10-3	Freddie Jones	3.7x10-2

The left side of Table 1 generally contains TEs, most notably Antonio Gates and Tony Gonzalez, who are able pass-catchers. The right-hand side, however, consists of players generally not known for their receiving ability. It seems prudent to reiterate here that I'm not claiming that PCA1 is a predictor of skill in any way; rather it merely indicates that some tight ends are being used more like wide receivers than others.

Aside from being a cool result on its own, it also provides a way to classify players based on a statistic that's directly comparable between positions. This is especially relevant right now, as New Orleans Saints TE Jimmy Graham attempts to be treated as a wideout for the purposes of contract negotiation. You can read up on the details for yourself, but the upshot is that if Graham can get himself classified as a WR he can earn himself an extra $5 million over what he would get as a TE. A lot of the discussion has centered around statistics, such as where Graham lines up before the snap or how many receptions he had last year, that aren't directly comparable between wideouts and tight ends.

Unfortunately my data isn't current enough to actually include Graham in this sample (ditto Rob Gronkowski, just FYI), but I would bet that he winds up in the same regime as Gates and Gonzalez. Regardless of whether my intuition is correct, however, PCA provides a way to directly compare players at different positions based only on very basic data, and therefore it could be a very useful tool for position disputes like these.