Football Outsiders (FBO) recently published some of their results on 2017 wide receiver routes by defense-adjusted value over average (DVOA), which is simply an attempt to value a player on a per-down basis, and is expressed as a percentage above or below average.
What FBO has done is take a receiver’s (a few RBs and TEs show up) per-down (DVOA) and total (DYAR - defense-adjusted yards above replacement) value for the twelve most common routes in the NFL: curl, out, dig, slant, drag, go/fly, WR screen, post, comeback, broken play, fade, and seam. In this article we will look at the first six and tackle the last six in Part 2.