Being as there has been quite a bit of discussion about Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Markus Wheaton over the course of the last few days, I thought I would make graphic for you to show where his catches took place last season.
It seems like many of you remember him catching quite a few third down passes last season in addition to most being down the middle of the field. The graphic below should paint a better picture for you.
Now, according to the official play-by-play scoring from last season, Wheaton was only credited with eight catches in the “middle” of the field, but I think you can clearly see that there were a few lazy official scorers if you were to divide the field up into thirds.
Most of Wheaton’s catches actually took place either outside of the numbers or right on them. Additionally, Wheaton only had 13 catches that came on third downs and that was almost 25% of his 53 receptions. 10 of those 13 catches did move the chains, however.
Here is another interesting nugget for you. Wheaton caught six passes last season behind the original line of scrimmage and according to our charting, he gained 49 yards after the catch on those plays. When you consider that we have him down for a total of 157 total yards gained after the catch last season, you can see that nearly a third of those yards came on those six receptions.
On the 46 receptions that Wheaton had past the original line of scrimmage last season, he averaged a dismal 2.32 yards gained after the catch and that’s a number he’ll definitely want to improve in 2015.
