The Kyle Shanahan dynasty has been dethroned!
Our annual look at YAC+ – yards after catch above replacement – traditionally begins with us making some sort of joke about this being our annual love letter to Shanahan and the 49ers. Shanahan and his progeny have dominated this stat for nearly an entire decade. The 49ers ranked first from 2018 through 2023, Shanahan’s Falcons ranked first in 2016, and the year between, when Shanahan was still setting up in San Francisco, Sean McVay’s Rams led the league. YAC+ certainly isn’t all scheme, but scheme helps, as does Shanahan’s tendency to draft and develop YAC guys to run his offense. For nearly a decade now, the rest of the league has been literally running to catch up with San Francisco here.
In 2024, however, the 49ers finally fell. They certainly weren’t bad, finishing sixth with a +0.6 YAC+. But that’s one of the biggest year-to-year drops we’ve ever seen, as they lapped the league at +1.6 in 2023 – they lost essentially an extra yard on every reception. They hadn’t finished under +1.0 since 2020, and hadn’t been this low since that 2017 transition year. They were, in other words, normal good and not all-time good.
Instead, your 2024 champions? The Baltimore Ravens at +1.35, just barely squeaking past the Lions at +1.33. It’s the lowest total for a winner since that injury-plagued 2020 49ers season, but a title is a title. Is this the end of the 49ers’ dominance in YAC? Or just a one-year blip? We can’t answer that question today, not having a crystal ball to predict the future just yet, but we can certainly dive into where Baltimore and Detroit soared and where San Francisco stumbled in our annual look back at last year’s leaderboards.
What is YAC+? YAC+ estimates how much YAC a receiver gained compared to what we would have expected from an average receiver catching passes of similar length in similar down-and-distance situations. This is imperfect—we don’t base YAC+ on what route a player runs, and obviously a go route will have more YAC than a comeback—but it does a fairly good job of telling you if this receiver gets more or less YAC than other receivers with similar usage patterns. You can get the full numbers for every player in FTN Football Almanac 2025 (available for pre-sale!), but we’ll cover the highlights today.
2024 Wide Receivers
A total of 91 wide receivers qualified last season, but we’ll just show a dozen from the top and bottom of the rankings to save space here.
Hey there, rook! In 2024, at least, YAC+ was where young wideouts shined. Keon Coleman, Brian Thomas Jr. and Xavier Worthy were all rookies, with Marvin Mims Jr. just in his second year. Got an athletic kid you don’t trust to run a full route tree yet? Give ‘em a couple screens and slants and let them run. Mims nearly laps the field, however, with his +4.0 mark being the highest we’ve seen since Deebo Samuel had a +4.2 mark in 2021.
Mims was not really used as a traditional wide receiver in 2024, of course. Over at ESPN, Bill Barnwell called him the best gadget player in the league, being lined up in strange positions to get the ball in his hands and let him make plays with his legs. Mims has been a Pro Bowler in each of his first two seasons as a returner, so even if his route running isn’t up to snuff with top wideouts, it’s clear he’s a weapon with the ball in his hands, and Denver found creative ways to get him involved.
Top Wide Receiver YAC+ Seasons, 2009-2024
Year
Player
Team
Targets
ALEX
aDOT
YAC+
2019
A.J. Brown
TEN
83
4.1
13.2
4.4
2021
Deebo Samuel
SF
117
-0.8
8.7
4.2
2024
Marvin Mims Jr.
DEN
51
-1.9
7.6
4.0
2009
Hakeem Nicks
NYG
69
2.0
10.8
3.4
2023
Deebo Samuel
SF
85
-2.9
6.8
3.2
2021
Ja’Marr Chase
CIN
124
4.3
13.0
3.2
2012
Danario Alexander
STL
56
3.4
12.0
3.1
2023
Rashee Rice
KC
100
-4.2
4.8
3.0
2009
Patrick Crayton
DAL
61
0.8
9.5
3.0
2024
Keon Coleman
BUF
55
6.2
15.1
2.9
As good as Mims is with the ball in his hands, however, there’s only so much you can do to make up for being used on swings and screens, two of the least valuable routes in football. More than half of Mims’ targets – 30 of 56 – came on those quick dump-off routes. Mims had 19 DYAR and a -4.3% DVOA on those routes, which is better than league average (-28.1%), but not exceptionally thrilling. There is certainly some value in taking these inefficient routes and making them average-ish, but his success rate was only 53% – he’s getting the ball in a lot of third-and-long situations, and being asked to try to make some magic happen.
Interestingly – and now we’re getting down into microsplits, so take it with a grain of salt – Mims had 10 swings/screens lined up wide, 10 lined up in the slot, 10 lined up in the backfield. His DVOAs? -29.3% lined up out wide, -6.1% in the slot, 22.1% in the backfield. Mims was second to only Puka Nacua in DYAR generated by a wide receiver in the backfield in 2024; someone with his speed and a wideout’s hands coming from an unusual position like that is a matchup problem for the defense. Denver needs to keep finding creative ways to get the ball into Mims hands, and screens lined up wide do not count.
CINCINNATI, OH – SEPTEMBER 30: Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase (1) reacts after getting a first down during the game against the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Cincinnati Bengals on September 30, 2021, at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, OH. (Photo by Ian Johnson/Icon Sportswire)
We need to highlight Ja’Marr Chase, who was still in the top 10 in YAC+ despite a massive workload. While Mims was producing extra YAC at a nigh-historic rate, he ended up being worth “only” 156 extra yards. Chase added an additional 206 yards with his YAC prowess. It’s not quite his best season in YAC+ – his rookie year ended up on that top 10 list, after all. But he’s maintained his high level with the ball in his hands even as he’s graduated to a more advanced route tree and drawn more and more coverage his way. “He’s good after the catch” might not even be in his top three skills, but it’s one more club in his bag and just one more reason he became the highest paid receiver in NFL history this offseason. Hey, if you’re good enough that even the Bengals realize they’ve got to pay you, you know you’re doing something right.
You may note that Jameson Williams is the only Raven or Lion on this list, so you may wonder how it is the Ravens managed to squeeze past the Lions in the overall YAC+ standings. The trouble is, Williams is the only solid Lions wideout in this stat. While Amon-Ra St. Brown led the league in receiving plus-minus, he was only worth +0.2 in YAC+, while Tim Patrick was at a flat +0.0. Baltimore didn’t have any top wideouts, but Zay Flowers (+1.4) and Rashod Bateman (+0.4) were both very solid. It means the Ravens wide receivers, as a group, had a +1.0 YAC+, while the Lions were only at +0.7. Detroit closes the gap some at tight end, but Baltimore’s gap with their wide receivers ends up being decisive.
We also should mention Deebo Samuel. Samuel once again finished high in these rankings, and Washington adding the sixth-place finisher in YAC+ should open some interesting things in their offense. So why were 49ers fans so annoyed with Samuel’s 2024? It’s because Samuel isn’t normally good in this stat. He’s normally amazing. Since Samuel entered the league in 2019, his +3.2 YAC is easily the best for any qualified wideout. The next-highest mark for someone with at least 300 targets is A.J. Brown’s +1.6, so Samuel really does lap the league here. Since signing his contract extension in 2022, however, that number has fallen to +2.7, and now here is, down with the “mere mortals”. The YAC Bros have been such a major part of San Francisco’s offensive identity that seeing them be mere mortals last season was downright uncanny. Take a look at what San Francisco normally gets out of their offense and what they got last season.
49ers YAC Dynasty YAC+ Numbers
Player
2018-23
2024
Diff
George Kittle
2.4
2.4
0.0
Deebo Samuel
3.4
1.9
-1.5
Brandon Aiyuk
0.9
0.1
-0.8
Bourne/Jennings/Pearsall
0.3
-0.8
-1.1
Running Backs
0.9
0.4
-0.5
George Kittle remains George Kittle and the running back situation will be helped if Christian McCaffrey is healthy. (Editor: can we make that “if” size 832 font and flashing bright red? Maybe making a loud siren sound of some sort? Thanks.) It’s the collapse of the wide receiver room that ended up ending the 49ers’ YAC+ winning streak, and nowhere was that collapse larger than with Deebo. And with him gone, the question is who will replace him, and the answer is … no one. There’s no one in the league quite like prime Deebo Samuel. The other great single-season YAC guys either developed into more well-rounded receivers or fizzled out as one-year wonders. There’s not really a precedent for the uber-gadget guy remaining extremely valuable for year after year. And because Samuel gets a diet of the shortest routes in the game, and because his hands are well below par for a wideout, he lives and dies with his YAC+. If he’s just good at it, it doesn’t overcome the other holes in his game. He needs to be otherworldly. And he often is. Maybe he will be again, healthier and in a new environment. We’ll wait and see.
Below, you’ll find the bottom wide receivers as well as the numbers for the best and worst tight ends and running backs plus all quarterbacks.