Current Season Overview

The 2025 NFL season has showcased exceptional receiving talent across all positions. Our receiving leaders tracker allows you to sort by traditional statistics like receiving yards, receptions, and touchdowns, as well as advanced analytics like total Expected Points Added (EPA)EPA per target, EPA per route run, catch rate over expected (CROE), and average depth of target (aDOT).

Here are the current leaders for receiving yards and total EPA, representing the most popular traditional and advanced statistics respectively:

Understanding Receiving Statistics

Traditional Season Stats

Traditional receiving statistics are widely used and a foundational way to assess receiver production in a given season. The table above includes the most relevant traditional stats for receivers, including total receiving yards, receptions, targets, touchdowns, and yards per catch. These metrics show pure production and opportunity volume.

Key Traditional Metrics:

• Total Receiving Yards - Season accumulation of passing yards gained
• Receptions - Total number of completed targets
• Targets - Total passing attempts directed at the receiver
• Receiving Touchdowns - Scoring receptions in the end zone
• Yards per Reception - Average yards gained per completed catch

Advanced Analytics

Beyond the traditional stats, there are a number of less well known, but highly useful advanced statistics. Here's an overview of the most important advanced stats for receivers:

Expected Points Added (EPA)

EPA stands for Expected Points Added and measures how much a given play increases or decreases a team's expected points based on field position, down, and distance. EPA shows true impact beyond basic statistics by accounting for game situation and field position.

Learn more about Expected Points Added

In the context of receiving, EPA can be calculated from the plays the receiver was involved in. EPA can be calculated from a variety of different perspectives, each creating a different view of receiver performance.

EPA Breakdowns:

• EPA per Reception - Efficiency metric similar to yards per recepetion.
• EPA per Target - Measures efficiency like EPA per reception, but also includes the negative effects of incompletions, drops, and interceptions. Recievers with poor on ball skills or who are targeted too frequently will see a large fall off between EPA per reception and EPA per target since they have, on average, more negative plays.
• EPA per Route - Perhaps the single best metric for evaluating receiver efficiency, EPA per route run takes the added context of EPA per Target, but also considers plays where a receiver is not targeted. In doing so, EPA per route run also encompasses an element of a receiver's ability to create seperation and opportunity for their quarterback. Receivers who see a lot of playing time, but fail to get open and earn targets tend to have a large fall off between EPA per reception and EPA per route run.
• EPA per Game - EPA per game takes the efficiency measuring ability of EPA per reception, target, or route run, and adds an element of volume. You will see that the best receivers are not only efficient, but also accumulate a lot of total EPA as they sustain efficient production over a volume of plays. EPA per Game is a great metric for total impact.

Target Analysis

Beyond EPA, another area of more advanced analysis is to look at performance based on targets as it can speak to not only the concepts discussed above, but also a receiver's use within an NFL offense.

Catch Rate - Catch rate is the percent of targets that resulted in a catch. Leading receivers tend to convert more of their targets into receptions, which creates a higher catch rate. However, catch rate can be highly sensative to contextual factors. For instance, Running Backs who are mainly targeted on short passes, designed screens, and checkdowns will have higher catch rates because these throws are short and often not contested.

Average Depth of Target (aDOT) - aDOT is the average depth of a receiver's targets. This metric gives context on the types of routes a receiver runs and the types of targets they receive. "Deep Threat" receivers often have high aDOTs, while underneath receivers and running backs tend to have much lower aDOT. This metric is good as a contextual counter balance to catch rate, but it's not perfect.

Catch Rate Over Expected (CROE) - CROE measures the percentage of targets a receiver catches relative to what would be expected based on contextual factors like depth of target. It can be thought of as a combination of catch rate and aDOT, and generally correlates well with receiver quality.

Learn more about Over Expected metrics here

Target Share - The final family of metrics are Target Share, which represent the percent of a team's targets a receiver gets across a variety of contexts. Elite receivers will generally command upwards of 30% target share. Receivers with particular skillsets may also see higher target shares in different contexts, which is why this page includes Target Share on Third Down and Target Share in the Red Zone.