3 reasons Christian Watson’s drop stats shouldn’t scare off Chicago Bears

Reason No. 1: How many total drops does Christian Watson actually have?

After seeing the original tweet, I decided to go into the advanced stat world to see what that overall drop rate meant.

Since I often say that stats don’t tell a single story, I looked into the Whys— like the beloved Chicago Bears coach Matt Nagy taught me.

https://twitter.com/DakotaZientek/status/1512195320704290825

In Watson’s four-year career with the NDSU Bison, Christian Watson caught a total of 104 passes, while being targeted 180 times. Looking at that, he has a ~58% catch rate. Now, if you take out the season he performed poorest (a COVID season in 2020), his catch rate jumps to ~65%.

Now, just because he was targeted and didn’t get a reception, that doesn’t mean there was a drop. It could’ve been an uncatchable ball, it could’ve gotten intercepted, it could’ve gotten batted at the line; there are many possibilities on why someone didn’t catch a ball outside of the fact that it was a drop.

Along with that, how many drops did Christian Watson actually have in his entire four-year career? 16 total drops.

Just to compare with the players in the top tier of the original tweet (George Pickens, 2.1%; and Skyy Moore, 3.3%), how many total drops did they have in their entire college career?

George Pickens drops per season

• 2019: 52 targets, 33 receptions, 0 drops
• 2020: 43 targets, 29 receptions, one drop
• 2021*: one target, one reception, 0 drops
  * injured most of 2021
  
• Total: one total drop (very impressive)

Skyy Moore drops per season

• 2019: 80 targets, 47 reception, two drops
• 2020: 36 targets, 25 reception, one drop
• 2021: 117 targets, 90 receptions, three drops
• Total: six total drops

So, while neither of them has 16 drops in their college career, Pickens essentially played two seasons, but even still, his hands are as close to a sure thing as anything.

As for Skyy Moore, his 2021 season really buffed up his numbers, as he got almost forty more targets in 2021 than he did in 2019; and he got almost 80 more targets in 2021 than he did in 2020.

As for Christian Watson, he had a total of 180 targets in his career. That’s more than Skyy Moore had in two seasons at Western Michigan.

So, with the target’s narrative out of the way, what’s the next reason that the Chicago Bears shouldn’t be scared off by Christian Watson’s drops stat.