Mike Wallace vs. Antonio Brown: Their Splits From Last Year are Meaningless

This weekend, when Ed Bouchette mentioned the possibility of trading Wallace after the Brown contract extension, he talked about Wallace’s slump last year. Jamison Hensley of the ESPN AFC North blog says the Brown signing does not preclude signing Wallace, though many will see it that way. He also points out how much better Brown was over the latter half of last year, 83.2 yards per game for Brown over the final 11 games, compared to 55.1 for Wallace.

Do those splits matter? Is Brown a better bet for 2012 because he was producing more yards late? Splits can happen, randomly and sometimes not even randomly. We often overestimate their impact on the future. I decided to look at all wide receivers since 1990 that played 16 games and had between 1,100 and 1,200 yards for a season. Fifty-eight receiver seasons are on the list, and I pulled the first eight games to second eight games splits for each.

The 15 seasons that were most skewed toward the final eight games: 64.2 yards per game the next year.

The 15 seasons that were most skewed toward early games: 64.3 yards per game the next year.

Chad Johnson, when he was actually Chad Johnson in 2002, had the most extreme second half breakout in the group, with 70.2% of his yards coming after week 8. He turned out pretty well. The next three names on that list, though, are Frank Sanders, Michael Haynes and Qadry Ismail. At the other end, Wallace is the most extreme, at 67.6% of his yards coming early. He replaced a young Andre Johnson, who had 65.6% of his yards early, and then averaged 94 yards a game in an injury-filled season the next year.

So, looking at just splits within the group tells us nothing. Those that had their yards skewed early, or skewed late, looked the same the next year. What if we look at teammates, though?

There have been 67 pairs of wide receiver teammates that had at least 1,000 yards in the same season since 1990. How many of them have shown such an extreme split like Wallace and Brown last year?

Only one, as it turns out, had a larger split than Wallace and Brown. That was (drum roll)  . . . Muhsin Muhammad and Patrick Jeffers in 1999. Muhammad had the large receiving numbers early, while Jeffers posted a whopping 825 yards over the final 8 games, more than 300 more than Muhammad. Jeffers tore his knee up in a pre-season game the next year, and basically ended his career, so that doesn’t tell us a whole lot.

The only other cases where one receiver had 200 more yards in the first 8 games, and then the tables were turned in the last 8 games by more than 200 yards, are Derrick Mason/Drew Bennett (2004), Tim Brown/Jerry Rice (2001), and Isaac Bruce/Torry Holt (2000). I’m not inspired that the splits are indicative of anything when the two most similarly extreme splits to Antonio Brown vastly outperforming Mike Wallace for half a season are Patrick Jeffers and Drew Bennett over Muhsin Muhammad and Derrick Mason, respectively.

[photo via US Presswire]