By the numbers: CUSA's top receivers

Kennesaw State’s getting ready for Sean Wilson and Delaware, which sent me on a fact-finding mission to research how his season - 40 catches, 591 yards, 5 TDs - compares to the rest of the league. I still don’t think CUSA is a good conference at all, but the wide receiver position has provided plenty of highlights and star power this year. Every week I preview the Owls, it seems like one of the opposing receivers jumps off the screen, at least relative to the competition level elsewhere on the field.

We’re watching a wild year for receivers in the league overall, with just about every archetype you can imagine. Liberty’s Makai Jackson should probably win OPOTY at this point, Sean Wilson and Isaiah Myers have been absurd on 50/50 balls, and a handful of small slot receivers - like WKU freshman Jonathan Stafford and MTSU’s Cam’ron Lacy - continue to power their team’s passing attacks. Jax State power forward Deondre Johnson even stopped dropping the ball, though he’s been quiet for the Gamecocks after plenty of offseason hype. We could keep going for a while naming some guys. Through 8 games, it’s the year of the wideout in CUSA.

Check out the chart below to compare the top performers at the position. If you find it as brutal to look at in picture form as I did, I also linked the interactive version below so that you can sort by category/team.

On a total EPA basis, Myers clears the CUSA field by a mile. He’s only bested by a trio of national names at the top of the FBS leaderboards, via Game on Paper. Decent company, huh? For comparison’s sake, Makai Jackson ranks 26th.

On a per target basis, the league actually gets a trio of wideouts into the top 11 nationally. Jackson rises the ranks (removing the volume limitations of Liberty’s run-heavy offense), as does Deondre Johnson.

When you break it down by success rate, only Myers ranks in the top 50, followed by Zion Booker at Kennesaw - who’s out for the season with an injury. Jackson (75th) and his teammate Jamari Person (78th) sneak into the top 80 as well. KSU’s Javon Rogers, at #95, is the only other top 100 wideout in terms of down-to-down success.

At the team level, you can see how CUSA offenses are swinging for the fences in the passing game. Seven out of the league’s ten teams - everyone except MTSU, Jax State, and Kennesaw - rank in the top 75 in passing explosiveness nationally. To lead the way, Missouri State (12th), Liberty (16th) and Delaware (28th) all rank in the top 30, as you might expect looking at the performances from their X receivers. This chart, created on College Football Data, confirms the eye test on KSU’s downfield limitations to this point. #3 in the league in passing success rate, but dead last by a country mile in explosiveness. They found a little more juice against MTSU - will that continue against Delaware over the weekend?

Another way to view the individual WR landscape is to compare CUSA’s top 15 in targets with the national percentiles in a few key categories to get a little different visual view. I also threw QB rating when targeted on there - the WRs can’t control that 100% of the time, but found it to be an interesting comp on reliability.

For a more subjective view, let’s consult our friends of the progrum at PFF to see see the top 10 in receiving grade:

Numbers and grades are fine. You know what’s actually cool? Highlights. We’ll be back tomorrow morning with a KSU/Delaware gameday preview, but I will leave you with some of my favorite WR plays of the season so far in CUSA.