Well At Least It Was Better Than Last Week

After two weeks of being either bad or terrible, the wide receivers rebounded against Oregon State to combine for a slightly below average performance. The dropped passes were way down, which is great, but major consistancy issues continue to plague the group.

We all love Marquess Wilson and for the most part he's been consistently awesome this season. The trouble lies in the rest of the group. Isiah Barton has been either really good, or really bad. Jared Karstetter was really good against Colorado, but has struggled since. Remove Wilson from the group and you have a well below average unit.

With Wilson, the group is averaging a slightly above average 8.21 yards per target. Without him, that number drops to 6.73. It only gets worse in Pac-12 play where the receivers not named Wilson have combined for 5.72 YPT. Yikes.

I think the most surprising thing from this table is Gino Simone was targeted three times. Simone was targeted all of four times in the first six games. It may not seem like much, but I'm hoping this is a positive development for Simone. His production has declined each season as he's battled injuries and fallen down the depth chart. Barton departs after this year, so there will be a big void to fill. Hopefully Simone can stay healthy and build some momentum for next season.

Good to see a bounce back performance from Barton after he struggled last week. He's been good in five of the seven games so far, the two games he was below average are the only two games he received more than 10 targets. 

You know a guy is pretty good when he has a 10.71 YPT game and it drops his season average. Wilson did manage a 48-yard reception, his fifth of 40 or more yards. He had nine catches of 40 or more yards last season.

Last season WSU receivers averaged 8.19 YPT with a catch rate of 59.88. Despite an easier schedule and significant improvement from Wilson (10.59, 57.89), the overall numbers are only slightly improved. Teams are obviously focusing on Wilson, but if the other receivers continue to struggle, at some point force feeding Wilson 10-12 targets will still be more productive than targeting players with sub 6.00 YPT.

The fourth receiver battle continues to be an interesting one. Ratliff has performed well for much of the season, but the last two weeks Myers has begun to see more time. Prior to the Stanford game, Myers had eight targets all of which came in the first two games of the season. 

Karstetter continues to be stuck in a funk. He is now tied for the team lead in drops and his season YPT fell below 6.0. His catch percentage is now down more than eight percent from a year ago despite seeing close to the same number of targets (7.8 vs 7.3). I was looking forward to comparing Karstetter's numbers with Tuel vs Lobbestael at quarterback, but may not get that opportunity now. Seven of Karstetter's targets have come from Tuel and in the extremely small sample size he averaged 4.71 YPT with a 57.14 catch rate.