Predicting a full stat-line for Patriots’ DeVante Parker in 2022

DeVante Parker was the Patriots’ biggest acquisition during the 2022 offseason. What kind of numbers can be put him in the 2022 season?

Will DeVante Parker be a true difference maker for the New England Patriots this season?  Only time will tell, but Parker has largely been a talented but inconsistent receiver during his career with the Dolphins, which began in 2015 when he was a first round pick.

I am a bit high on Parker; I think he and Mac Jones have developed a decent bit of chemistry already, and it’s clear that he is the WR1 on the team.

I want to take a stab at projecting his stat-line for 2022.  I think most fans enjoy reading stats and seeing how their favorite teams and players stack up with others across the NFL.

To project his stats, I am going to use several average calculations.  It will make more sense as I work through the method.

The first thing I want to do is to find the average passing attempts per game that DeVante Parker was a part of during his time with the Dolphins.

So, beginning in 2015 and ending in 2021, the Miami Dolphins threw the ball 36.8, 30.2, 37.6, 28.4, 38.4, 34.9, 36.2.

In every year except 2019, the Miami Dolphins threw the ball at least 30 times per game.

The next thing I want to find is DeVante Parker’s target share.  This is the amount of times he is targeted based on the passing attempts per season.

The next bit of information to find here is finding the total passing attempts per season while Parker was with the Dolphins.

Starting in 2015 and ending in 2021, the Dolphins attempted 588, 477, 602, 455, 615, 559, 615.  These numbers are the amount of passing attempts the Miami Dolphins attempted per season while DeVante Parker was a Dolphin.  The next thing is to find the target share.

I am simply going to take the amount of targets that Parker has per season to find a target share, expressed as a percentage.

Year by year, DeVante Parker’s yearly targets were 50, 87, 96, 47, 128, 103, and 73.

If we divide each of these into the yearly passing attempts, we get 8.50%, 18.24, 15.95%, 10.33%, 20.81%, 18.43%, 11.87%.  If we average this out, we get 14.88%, meaning over the course of his career, Parker receives 14.88% of targets.

Next, I want to find the amount of yearly passing attempts that the Patriots had during the same 2015-2021 time frame.

In 2015 through 2021, the Patriots attempted 629, 550, 587, 574, 620, 440, 535.  If we average these passing attempts, we get 562 passing attempts, on average, from 2015-2021 for the Patriots.

If we take DeVante Parker’s 14.88% career target share of 562 passing attempts, we’d get 83.62, or 84 targets for the season.  I would now reasonably project DeVante Parker to be targeted 84 times during the 2022 season.

Now we need to figure out how many receptions he’ll get.  Pro Football Reference has a statistic slot called Catch%, which is simply the player’s receptions divided into targets.  This tells us how many times a player will catch the ball, expressed as a percentage.

DeVante Parker has a career Catch% of 57.9%, meaning Parker will catch the ball 57.9% of the time it’s thrown towards him.

Well, if we’re projecting him to be targeted 84 times, with a 57.9% Catch%, we can now project DeVante Parker to catch 48.63, or 49 passes for the 2022 season.  Parker averages 48 receptions for his career, so 49 is not unreasonable.

Parker’s yards per reception is right at 14, so 14 multiplied by 48 is 672 yards on the season.

DeVante Parker averages about three touchdowns per season, so we can give him about that for the 2022 season.

So, in totality, I would project DeVante Parker to catch 48 passes for 672 yards and three touchdowns on the 2022 season.

These are clearly not elite numbers, or even WR1 numbers, but I think they somewhat reflect what he’s produced during his career.