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The Indianapolis Colts are bringing in a new quarterback to the offense in the form of Carson Wentz, and the hope seems to be that wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. will establish a rapport strong enough to make him the leader of the passing offense.
Projecting the wide receiver room and the distribution of targets is difficult for the Colts in 2021. Pittman Jr. is entering his second season while the Colts re-signed T.Y. Hilton and are expecting a fully healthy Parris Campbell going into training camp.
Though Hilton led the team with 93 targets in 2020, there are many outlets projecting a breakout for the second-year player out of USC.
In 13 games (eight starts) during his rookie campaign, Pittman Jr. recorded 40 receptions (61 targets) for 503 yards and one touchdown. His development was slowed a bit when he dealt with leg compartment syndrome and was placed on the injured reserve, missing Weeks 4-6.
General manager Chris Ballard has been extremely bullish on Pittman Jr. and feels that injury is keeping us from viewing him in a different light.
“I think Michael Pittman is going to be a great player,” Ballard said this offseason. “I think you saw it. If he doesn’t have the compartment syndrome you know and miss the three games, and that was a serious injury. And he fought to come back, and it took a little time to get back. But I think you saw him gain (confidence), I think you saw at Tennessee and in the playoff game versus Buffalo, he was outstanding.”
Though his route tree was limited, Matt Harmon of Reception Perception charted Pittman Jr. with a 71.6% success rate against man coverage (75th percentile), which bodes well for a breakout.
Standing in the way of Pittman Jr. and a breakout season isn’t his skills. He has the size, speed and athleticism to be a difference-making X-receiver in the formation. It all comes down to target share and how much confidence Wentz will have with his new receiver.
For the most part, Wentz has spread the ball around throughout his career. Since he’s entered the league, no wide receiver connected to him has had a single-season target share of 25% or higher. Alshon Jeffery came close in 2017. The same goes for Frank Reich, whose scheme stresses spreading the ball to different targets rather than hyper-targeting one player.
For context, here’s a look at the single-season target shares for the WR1 when Wentz has been the starter and for the three seasons Reich has been the head coach of the Colts:
| Season | Wentz’s WR1 Target Share | Reich’s WR1 Target Share |
| 2020 | 14.4% (Weeks 1-13) | 16.8% |
| 2019 | 18.9%* | 21.2%* |
| 2018 | 18.4% (Weeks 3-14) | 18.6% |
| 2017 | 24.1% (Weeks 1-14) | |
| 2016 | 19.1% |
*Both Alshon Jeffery and T.Y. Hilton played only 10 games in 2019 but still had dominant target shares in games played. I prorated their target shares over 16 games*
Given that Pittman Jr. has a similar body type and play style to Jeffery, there is hope that a big target share is on the way. Jeffery accounted for the WR1 target shares in the 2017-2019 seasons above. That said, there will still be competition in the room from Hilton and even Campbell. This could—and likely will—keep Pittman Jr.’s target share from hitting that mid-20% mark.
Even so, we can comfortably project a target share of 18-20% for the WR1 in the offense. That’s not great but if it’s Pittman Jr., there is hope that a breakout season could take place. That would give Pittman Jr. 108 targets to work with if we project 600 pass attempts for the Colts.
Plus, there is upside that Pittman Jr. exceeds that target share if he and Wentz click right away. From the wide receiver’s words about how impressed he was this offseason, that is certainly in the cards.
“I would say it was like the first or second time that I had thrown with him,” Pittman told reporters during the spring. “We were running post routes and he threw like a 65-yard post, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve really gotta dig down and run.’ So I’d say that his arm strength and probably the way that he works — he’s so dialed in that he is on a mission.”
Now that we’ve established that Pittman Jr. would likely see a baseline of 18-20% of the team’s targets if he were the WR1, we can project what a breakout year might look like.
A breakout implies a bit of variance and production over what is expected of the player. For instance, I currently have Pittman Jr. projected for an 18% target share, which comes out to 104 targets. That wouldn’t be enough for me to consider his season a breakout.
Now, if we bump that up a bit to account for the variance, we get 126 targets on a 21% target share. Given what we know from Pittman Jr.’s rookie production and Jeffery’s production during his time with Wentz, this is what a breakout year would look like:
| Targets | Rec. | Rec. Yds | TDs | Catch % | Tgt Share | TD% | Y/R |
| 126 | 80 | 1,024 | 6 | 64% | 21% | 7.5% | 12.8 |
It turns out, essentially doubling his production from his rookie campaign would be a breakout season. I think even if Pittman Jr. doesn’t necessarily eclipse 1,000 yards, it can still be considered a breakout.
Now, this shouldn’t be the projection of the most likely outcome. We are being a bit subjective here and accounting for production over expectation.
But if Pittman Jr. is able to command up to even a 20% target share, there’s a good bet he breaks out in a big way for the Colts and takes that step toward being an alpha.
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