Ollie Gordon II

Across 1,570 incumbent receiver seasons since 1999, an arrival this size cost the incumbent about 0.2 points of target share — against a year-to-year swing of ±4.6. Real, and far smaller than the noise it sits in.

The other half of the intuition — that a defence can no longer double him — was tested on the same seasons and did not appear: the effect on yards per target was -0.003 to 0.006, an interval straddling zero.

What actually moves a target share year to year is reversion: shares are pulled toward 19.1%, and that term is several times larger than anything the roster did. How we measured it