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Bill Barnwell, ESPN Editor-in-Chief
It’s peak summer, which means one thing to me: It’s time to rank the NFL’s offensive playmakers. Every year around this time, I take stock of all the moves franchises are making to surround their various starting quarterbacks with talent in hopes of turning a hot offseason into a Super Bowl victory.
On the one hand, you could say that the 2023 season proved that teams can win. without The Chiefs spent most of 2023 begging any of their receivers to catch the ball. I would also point out that they got a lot out of future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce, saw Isiah Pacheco blossom into a full season as a starter, and got just enough out of Rashee Rice & Co. in the playoffs to move up the AFC standings. The guys on the other side of the field in Super Bowl LVIII might have done enough to turn their quarterback into a league MVP with one or two more solid starts late in the season.
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If a team has Patrick Mahomes, they can probably survive without a great group of playmakers. What about any of the 31 teams trying to beat him in 2024? Well, it would be nice to be near the top of that list. Let’s go over the guys who catch and run the ball and how each team is positioned to take advantage of good quarterback play in 2024, from worst to first.
But before you fire off that angry tweet, consider the basic rules I followed in writing this article:
This is only for running backs, wide receivers and tight ends. In other words, imagine that every group of offensively talented players had the chance to play the same average quarterback in an average scheme with average weather, average luck, and at an average pace. Who would have the best offense in the league?
This is only for on-field performance during the 2024 season. While I talk a lot about contract value and long-term impacts in evaluating the league, none of that matters once the games start. It’s just about what each player could do this season, not what will happen in the years to come.
I use each player’s recent level of play and various advanced metrics to get the best idea of their performance while trying to fit within the context of each player. Aging curves are important here; we know that players in their early 20s are more likely to improve than players in their 30s. When it comes to draft picks, I leave my own feelings about each player out of the equation and rely more on the historical performance of draftees in their respective ranges during their rookie seasons. In other words, to estimate what Chargers receiver Ladd McConkey will do in his rookie season, I look at the typical performance of receivers selected early in the second round.
Injury history and suspensions are significant. It’s impossible to predict injuries. (If Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles tendon in the first series of the season, I know a few NFL teams that might want to hire you.) At the same time, a player’s injury history could lead us to lean one way and underestimate some of his projected performance because of the likelihood of injury. Deebo Samuel hasn’t played a full season as a professional; it seems likely he’ll miss a few games in 2024.
I expect players coming off major injuries, like Tyler Higbee and TJ Hockenson, to be out for a good portion of the regular season. While we don’t have any official word on his status for 2024, Rashee Rice’s pending suspension has me keeping him out of the lineup for a few games. On the other hand, I expect CeeDee Lamb and other players who will be “waiting” through training camp for new contracts to be on the field in Week 1.
Wide receivers are weighted more heavily than running backs or tight ends. I’m just following the NFL example. Justin Jefferson makes $35 million per season. Christian McCaffrey is the only fullback making more than $15 million per year. Twenty different receivers make more than $20 million per season, a number no running back or tight end can match.
This is a league where elite receivers are considered more valuable than ever. Therefore, my rankings reflect that sentiment, considering receivers more valuable than players at other positions.
The focus is on elite players and a team’s top five contributors. Depth is important, but teams would probably rather have Jefferson and four other backup-level receivers than, say, five guys like Darnell Mooney or DJ Chark. Having a player who can beat any coverage is extremely valuable, and these rankings tend to value teams that have game-changing players at one position or another.
Since teams can field five point guards at a time, I considered the top five players on each team as their primary arguments for these rankings. I won’t mention every player in every article, but players outside the top five were mostly used for tiebreakers between very close teams, given that they’re unlikely to make an impact in 2024.
Efficiency is important. I’ve done my best to try to normalize the differences between what players can do and how their team has played, which isn’t always the same thing. Speed is a key factor. Thanks to a great defense and a middling offense, the Browns ran a league-high 1,187 plays last season, 50 more than any other team. And on the other end of the field, without a great defense, the Seahawks ran just 995 offensive snaps. That’s 11 more plays per game for the Browns, all of which add to their players’ cumulative stats. It doesn’t reflect better performance.
As a result, you’ll see a lot of metrics that use averages rather than cumulative performance. Two of these come up a lot for receivers: yards per route and target share. Yards per route is the average number of yards a receiver gained when he ran an eligible route, whether he caught the ball or was targeted on the play. Target share is the percentage of time a receiver was targeted when he ran a route. Neither stat is perfect, but each will help us understand whether a receiver was able to create opportunities while he was on the field. I’ll also use ESPN’s advanced receiver tracking metrics, which use data from NFL Next Gen Stats to estimate their impact at each moment.
Now that all that is said, let’s review our teams. In 2022 and 2023, the Texans were the last team in these rankings. Spoiler: they’re not 32nd this time. Instead, a team that consistently ranked in the top 10 has plunged to the bottom of the point guard rankings:
Switch to a team:
ARI | ATL | BAL | BUF | CAR | DOG | CIN
KEY | VALLEY | THE | THIS | EN | OR | IN
JAX | KC | BAC | LAR | LV | MISSING | MIN
NE | NO | NYG | NYJ | PHI | PIT | SF
SEA | TB | TEN | WSH
2023 ranking: 5 | 2022 ranking: 6
Gulp. Nearly every major player who put the Chargers in the top five last season has taken a big step back, left town and not been replaced by a player of similar caliber. The most notable player remaining is Quentin Johnston, who averaged 0.94 yards per carry as a rookie even after Mike Williams’ injury took away his starting spot. The only first-round receivers since 2007 who had worse rookie seasons were Nelson Agholor and Darrius Heyward-Bey.