Alfred Jenkins
WR, ATL


SB Nation's Atlanta Falcons group page, The Falconoholic, recently ran a series of articles called "The Scale of Falconliness" in which former Falcon players are rated from 1 to 10 on a scale of who's "most Falconly."  Number one on the list, and the only player to receive a perfect 10, was Tommy Nobis, also known as "Mr. Falcon." 

It's a somewhat silly and entirely subjective measure, but I appreciate it.  It's because it was clearly written by true fans, knowledgeable fans who have a deep understanding of the team's history.  I'm not a Falcons fan myself, but as a Bills fan I appreciate the dedication of a fan who sticks by his or her team when things are rough.  Nobis's Falcons never once made the playoffs, and yet these fans still named him as their number one most "Falconly" player.

When the series turned to wide receivers, the subject of Alfred Jenkins came up.  He was given an 8.5, higher than any other player at the position.  He played nine years, all with Atlanta.  His teams made the playoffs a couple of times, but more usually finished well below .500.  Nevertheless, here was this fan page rating him as the most "Falconly" of all Falcon receivers, and the numerous comments to the article made it clear to me that to true Falcons fans, he is a very beloved and well-remembered former star.  One guy even recounted the story of an Atlanta deli that served his favorite sandwich, the "Alfred Jenkins" until it closed in the early 2000s.  He didn't even remember what was on it, just the name.

Let's have a look at the Falcons' all time receiving leaders through the 2011 season:

Rk	Player	From	To	G	Rec	Yds	TD
1	Roddy White	2005	2011	112	530	7374	45
2	Terance Mathis	1994	2001	126	573	7349	57
3	Alfred Jenkins	1975	1983	110	360	6267	40
4	Andre Rison	1990	1994	78	423	5633	56
5	Jim R. Mitchell	1969	1979	155	305	4358	28
6	Michael Haynes	1988	1997	99	266	4220	34
7	Alge Crumpler	2001	2007	108	316	4212	35
8	Wallace Francis	1975	1981	106	244	3695	27
9	Bert Emanuel	1994	1997	62	260	3600	24
10	Michael Jenkins	2004	2010	103	276	3512	20

Well it's a pretty open and shut case, right?  There's Jenkins, #3 in all-time receiving yards for the Falcons, and fourth in receptions.  So, that must mean Roddy White, not Jenkins is the greatest Falcons' receiver of all time.  The high Falconliness rating for Jenkins must have been due to the rosy glow of nostalgia.

Not so fast.  There's a problem with the numbers.  The problem is, these are raw numbers.  Comparing raw numbers across generations of football players is dodgy at best, and doing it for any stats involving the passing game is useless.  What we need instead is a rate stat, the kind of number I described in last week's article on Bert Jones.  As I said in that article, rate stats allow you to compare the relative contribution of players given the performance environments they played in.

For quarterbacks, stats sites like Pro-Football-Reference.com offer plenty of rate stats, like AY/A.  However, for receivers, no such stat exists, besides the generic Approximate Value (AV).  That number is pretty good at determining the general overall value of a player's contributions to his team's success in winning, but not at all good at pointing out a specific sort of performance, like catching passes and going downfield with them.  So, since I have no stat available to tell me what I want, I have to make one.

What I wanted to see is how much specific receivers contributed to the passing performances of their teams for the years they played in.  So the first thing I did was collect all the individual season performances for the Falcons since the 1970 merger along with the team's total completions and passing yards from those years. 

Here are the top seasons for Falcon receivers, in terms of the highest percentage of team completions by individual players:

Rank	Player	Year	Rec	TmRe	%Comp
1	Roddy White	2008	88	265	33.21
2	Roddy White	2010	115	361	31.86
3	Art Malone	1972	50	157	31.85
4	Andre Rison	1991	81	260	31.15
5	Terance Mathis	1994	111	374	29.68
6	Wallace Francis	1979	74	251	29.48
7	Terance Mathis	1999	81	278	29.14
8	Eric Metcalf	1995	104	364	28.57
9	Andre Rison	1990	82	293	27.99
10	Alfred Jenkins	1977	39	140	27.86

Roddy White's 2008 sets the mark, as he caught 33.21% of all the Falcons' pass completions that year.  Notice White caught a couple dozen more balls in 2010, but the Falcons completed a lot more passes, and so White's production in this regard isn't as high.

Here are the top ten seasons in percentage of team yards by individual receivers:

Rank	Player	Year	Yds	TmYd	%Yds
1	Alfred Jenkins	1976	710	1414	50.21
2	Alfred Jenkins	1977	677	1356	49.93
3	Ken Burrow	1974	545	1307	41.70
4	Roddy White	2008	1382	3336	41.43
5	Roddy White	2010	1389	3567	38.94
6	Stacey Bailey	1984	1138	3050	37.31
7	Wallace Francis	1979	1013	2729	37.12
8	Alfred Jenkins	1975	767	2067	37.11
9	Alfred Jenkins	1981	1358	3699	36.71
10	Jim R. Mitchell	1974	479	1307	36.65

Again, White had the most single-season yards in team history in 2010.  But in 1976, Jenkins accounted for a remarkable 50.21% of his team's yards (and try to imagine a team in today's fNFL passing for just 1400 yards).  My point is not whether or not Jenkins was a better player than Roddy White - rather, it is that his contribution to the 1976 team was more significant than White's was to the 2008 one. 

Now we need to put the two numbers on a scale that balances receptions and receiving yards equally valuable.  I'm not sure whether they are, but in this case we'll just take that as a base assumption.  To do that, we'll take White's 2008 receptions percentage and Jenkins' 1976 yards percentage, divide those numbers (33.21 and 50.21), and multiply them by 50.  We'll apply that same calculation to all the players, which will give us two numbers on a 0-50 scale with White's 2008 number and Jenkins' 1976 number at 50.  We'll call those Adjusted Reception Contribution Percentage (ARCP) and Adjusted Yards Contribution Percentage (AYCP), respectively.  Then we'll add the two numbers together to give us a total.  We'll call that number Adjusted Contribution Percentage (ACP).

Here are the top ten ACP seasons in Falcons' history:

Rank	Player	Year	ARCP	AYCP	ACP
1	Alfred Jenkins	1977	41.94	49.72	77.78
2	Alfred Jenkins	1976	39.32	50.00	76.33
3	Roddy White	2008	50.00	41.25	74.63
4	Roddy White	2010	47.97	38.78	70.80
5	Wallace Francis	1979	44.39	36.96	66.60
6	Ken Burrow	1974	32.00	41.52	62.95
7	Andre Rison	1990	42.14	34.76	62.89
8	Tony Martin	1998	41.93	34.73	62.73
9	Peerless Price	2003	41.90	34.66	62.63
10	Art Malone	1972	47.95	30.36	62.33

Now we have a rate stat that allows us to compare individual seasons.  Finally, we'll add every season for every player and come up with their Career Adjusted Contribution Percentage (CACP):

Rank	Player	From	To	CACP
1	Alfred Jenkins	1975	1983	524.37
2	Terance Mathis	1994	2001	491.76
3	Roddy White	2005	2011	470.13
4	Jim R. Mitchell	1970	1979	446.31
5	Andre Rison	1990	1994	357.19
6	Alge Crumpler	2001	2007	350.11
7	Wallace Francis	1975	1981	310.16
8	Ken Burrow	1971	1975	283.70
9	Michael Jenkins	2004	2010	258.39
10	Michael Haynes	1991	1993	255.25

So, there you have it.  Alfred Jenkins contributed more to the Falcon teams he played on than any other receiver in the history of the franchise.  So apparently it wasn't just the rosy glow of nostalgia: it seems that Jenkins deserved both the sandwich and the 8.5 Falconliness rating.  Maybe even a little more.

Jenkins sure put the 49ers between his buns in Week 14.  Though the Falcons aren't known for their offensive explosiveness, Jenkins exploded, hauling in 6 passes for a team-record 232 yards and three touchdowns as the Falcons rolled, 28-14, keeping their eyes on the NFC West prize.