Gushing about Demaryius Thomas and Inquiring about Stephen Hill

Two Georgia Tech wide receivers in the past couple of years were drafted in the 1st round of the NFL Draft. They are: Calvin Johnson (2007), Demaryius Thomas (2010), and now Stephen Hill could be going in the first round in 2012. Johnson played in a "pro-style" offense while under Chan Gailey. Thomas and Hill have both played in a Option-Flexbone style offense under Paul Johnson.

 More graphs and analysis after the jump.


Notes:
ALL data / definitions used from SBN's Bill C. Link is here.

SD and PD are short for Standard Down and Passing Down
Calvin Johnson data taken from his 2005 and 2006 seasons.
Demaryius Thomas data taken from his 2007, 2008, 2009 seasons.
Stephen Hill data taken from his 2009, 2010, 2011 seasons. 


Targets = receptions plus incompletions targeting a given receiver. (NOTE: there is no target data for passes that were intercepted or for some throwaways. In the end, about 85-90 percent of passes have target data. I thought about adjusting for that in some way, but since it is the same for every team, I did not. Just keep that in mind.) Catches = receptions.
Yards = receiving yards
Catch Rate = catches / targets
Yards Per Target = yards / targets
Target % = the percentage of a team's passes targeting a given receiver.
Target No. = the rank of a given player in terms of his team's targets.
%SD = the percent of a players targets that came on standard downs. As you'll see, this varies greatly from player to player.

1. Demaryius Thomas had a higher PDCatch Rate than a SDCatch Rate. According to the data,  Demaryius had 71 passing down catches, to 48 standard down catches. However, he had 25 more passing down targets (more on that later). This is because Georgia Tech tends to run the ball 26% more (2011) on standard downs, as seen here and here.
2. That being said, Stephen Hill's catch rate is 14.4% lower on passing downs. Hill was targeted 56 times on standard downs and 65 times on passing downs. Yet he caught 27 standard down targets, and only 22 passing down targets. What also intrigues me is that Hill's SD YPT is almost 3 yards higher than his PD YPT. This points to a lot of inefficiency. 25.5 YPC is outrageous and points to a deep threat, but only because the few times that he does catch balls, they are for big gains. Stephen Hill was just not as important in Paul Johnson's offense as Demaryius Thomas. Thomas was targeted 10% on his teams than Hill was. Maybe the inefficiency has something to do with that.