How we got there: The yards a receiver earns

We asked: can you measure a receiver without measuring his quarterback?

Every cell below runs against the public wr_altitude_week view: one row per receiver week since 2016, targets priced at league rates by depth, earned yards next to delivered yards next to the gap. The instrument never sees who threw the ball.

Earning is target work. The cell below runs the live association between targets per route and earned yards across every receiver week, 15 or more routes. A receiver earns his number by drawing the ball, not by what happens after.

The published receipts need a split-half harness: the reliability ladder (plain yards .166 under a target gate, .267 under a routes gate, .290 with first downs, earned yards .356) and the quarterback-coupling test (earned couples with its own passing offense at .056; delivered couples about four times tighter) both split seasons into odd and even weeks, which is a scripted analysis rather than a single cell. The spec and results live in the article backtest block. Every column they used ships in this view, so the harness is one fork away.