Why don't receivers catch with their hands?

[Holladay]

I see too many dropped passes by trying to catch it in their gut. Are they coached to do it that way.

To use a comparison, in basketball, it is all hands.

I dunno.

[jerryaldini]

Originally Posted by cdcox

I calculated the drop rate of every WR by:

Drop rate = drops/(drops+receptions)

The denominator of that represents catchable balls.

I then plotted the drop rate in 2021 vs the drop rate in 2022 of every receiver who caught at least 50 passes in both years. If some players had better hands than others, you'd expect them to have similar drop rates in both years and all the points to be scattered on a 45 degree line. Instead you get a scatter plot with a correlation coefficient of only 0.2. There is another analysis I did, but it is a little more complex.

Beautiful work cdcox! Not gonna fit anything but a flat line through that one. But Rashee Rice is coming for it.