We Have A Winner

Props to Matt W. of Groveport, OH for being the first one to figure out the reason that number of passing plays and receivng plays may or may not be the same.

Most of you focused on either the individual receivers or guessed that the difference was in the incompletions. Sadly for everyone but Matt, (or at least prior to Matt) neither is the case.

When we determine player participation percents for a receiver, we take his number of receptions and divide it by all the total number of passing attempts whether they were complete or incomplete (statistically, the number of passes attempted).

For a quarterback, however, we determine the number in a slightly different manner. We calculate total passing plays as the number of attempts (completions + incompletions) plus the number of sacks. Why? Because a QB doesn't get sacked unless he is attempting to throw the ball.

As to the reason behind this, let's look at a QB who comes into a game, runs three passing plays, and gets sacked all three times. Technically he has no official passing attempts, yet there are three plays that he was involved in that are not running plays either.

As for the WRs, we don't count sacks against them because the ball we never thrown.

So, if there are no sacks against a given team during a game, the number of passing plays will be the same as the number of passing attempts which in turn equals the number of receiving plays. There, Got it?

Again congrats Matt. We'll be contacting you shortly to get your membership set up. As for the rest of you, we appreciate your response. Keep your eyes open, we may just be handing out a few more free memberships in the near future.