Unlocking Alpha: Evaluating Cowboys receivers via advanced metrics

As a football fan over the years, you’ve grown more or less accustomed to a cornucopia of non-traditional metrics like DVOA, QBR, ANY/A, aDOT, CPOE, EPA and many others that have added to our understanding (some would say: confusion) about football. Today, we take a deep dive into one specific metric that we haven’t often looked at, but that provides some interesting insights into the Cowboys receiving corps.

Yards Per Route Run (YPRR) is an advanced football metric that measures a pass catcher’s efficiency by dividing their total receiving yards by the number of passing routes they ran, essentially giving us the average number of receiving yards a player makes every time he runs a route.

Calling it an ‘advanced metric’ might be stretching it though. At its core, YPRR has two two building blocks: yards and routes. One points to production. The other signals involvement. Blending the two via division gives us a measure of a pass-catcher’s on-field efficiency.

Why YPRR Matters

• Controls for Opportunity: Unlike raw receiving yards, which can be inflated by simply playing more snaps or being on a pass-heavy team, YPRR evaluates what a player does on a per-snap basis.
• Separation & Efficiency: It is an excellent indicator of a player’s ability to create separation from defenders and perform well in space.
• Predictive Value: YPRR is a stable metric year-to-year in the NFL and historically has been one of the most reliable metrics for predicting future wide receiver success and identifying which players deserve more targets in an offense.
• College to NFL: YPRR also has value as a draft evaluation metric, as it is mostly stable from college to the NFL.

How to Evaluate the Numbers

• ≥ 2.0: Elite. Generally indicates a top-tier wide receiver.
• 1.5 – 2.0: Above average to solid NFL starter.
• < 1.5: Below average.
• < 1.0: Poor. Indicates a rotational player or someone struggling to earn playing time.

In the NFL, hitting 2.0 YPRR or higher is a difficult task reserved for true No. 1 options. To put it in perspective, out of all NFL players running significant routes in a season, usually only 15 to 25 wide receivers break the 2.0 barrier. In 2025, 16 wide receivers (min. 250 routes run) achieved that mark.

The absolute elite-tier players will occasionally push above 3.0 YPRR but maintaining anything over 2.0 over a full season establishes a player as an elite, high-volume weapon. Two players exceeded 3.0 YPRR last year: Puka Nacua (3.70) and Jaxon Smith-Njigba (3.61).

College vs NFL

YPPR is probably a bit more ubiquitous in college football, but the target numbers differ significantly from the NFL. In college football, elite prospects regularly post a YPRR between 3.0 and 4.5 due to wider talent disparities and simpler defensive coverage schemes.

When analysts evaluate college prospects entering the NFL draft, they use 2.0 YPRR as a bare-minimum baseline floor, rather than the ceiling. A college receiver finishing below 2.0 YPRR...