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ESPN Writer- Matt Bowen is a fantasy football and NFL writer for ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2015, writes regularly for ESPN+ and spent multiple years on "NFL Matchup." After graduating from the University of Iowa, Matt played safety in the NFL for St. Louis, Green Bay, Washington and Buffalo over seven seasons.
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ESPN Analytics- Seth Walder is an analytics writer at ESPN, specializing in quantitative analysis. He is also a regular on "ESPN Bet Live" and helps cover sports betting. Seth has been at ESPN since 2017. He previously worked at the New York Daily News covering the Jets and Giants. You can follow Seth on X via @SethWalder.
Different NFL routes produce varied results, based on the route itself, team tendencies and receiver profiles. So what are the most efficient route types?
We dove into the data to find the six most productive routes in the NFL, and then picked out the teams, receivers and quarterbacks who stand out in each concept, for better or worse. We also identified the least effective route -- a risky upside play that doesn't always pay off.
Route statistics are riddled with two issues: selection bias and small samples. We can't completely solve the former, but looking at yards per route run rather than yards per target helps. Non-targets shouldn't be considered neutral ground. And for sample size, it's just a natural issue considering we track over 30 route names using our own route classification model with NFL Next Gen Stats data. For some of the sections below, we used data going back to the start of the 2021 season -- rather than just four weeks of stats for 2022 -- to increase the sample. Full explanation of the data is at the bottom of the story.
Let's look at the top six routes in terms of efficiency, along with the best and worst performers for each.
Jump to:
Most efficient | Least efficient
