This sort of analysis is interesting to show who is truly the top receivers but there are few surprises. Considering that each team typically uses three receivers and only one can turn in the best performance against an opponent defense for the year, that means that gaining a Top 1 performance is realistically beating out 48 others against that defense (3 x 16 games). Even Top 8 performances are impressive given the sheer volume of receivers and games that each defense goes against in a full season.

Remember - Consistency rankings view a player from the offensive perspective - how many times did he have a big game? BTA rankings show the same players from a defensive perspective - how many times did he do better than most other players when they faced the same defense?

There are three measurements with BTA analysis and to the right you can see an example of how it was derived considering all WR performances against the Texans last season.

1. BTA Top 8 - Shows how many times a WR faced a defense last year and produced a top 8 performance allowed by that defense for that position. To the right in yellow are the Top 8 performances against the Texans by a WR using standard performance scoring. Mason, Chambers, Wayne, Edwards, S. Moss, S. Smith, Bennett and Stokley are all credited with a Top 8 game here.

2. BTA Top 3 - Shows how many times a player faced a defense last year and produced a top 3 performance allowed by that defense for that position. Considering only HOU, Mason, Chambers and Wayne are credited with a Top 3 game.

3. BTA Top 1 - Shows how many times an RB faced a defense last year that produced the BEST performance allowed by that defense for that position. Considering only the Houston defense, only Mason is credited with a Top 1 game. Realize as well that the best possible score here would be 13 games since each WR would face three teams twice and only one game against a team could be best.

Taking that methodology and applying it to the most inconsistent of the highest scoring positions yields interesting results.

Some of the notable facts that came from this was that Marvin Harrison only turned in Top 8 performances 40% of the time unlike the 69% managed by Randy Moss or the 56% by Tory Holt. Only four receivers had over 50% of their games produce Top 8 performances allowed by opposing defenses and Steve Smith is perhaps the biggest surprise. The above table indicates how inconsistent that receivers truly are with the lengthy list of receivers that had at least three Top 3 performances allowed by a defense.

Santana Moss rose on the list considering Top 3 performances thanks to his consecutive touchdown run last year and Anquan Boldin's magic season seems no less impressive viewing his feat from a defensive perspective. Several players were seemingly disappointments last year but actually had a decent showing with this criteria. Players like Koren Robinson, Reggie Wayne, David Boston and Keyshawn Johnson. Where they lacked was in consistency which is always hard to find in this position.

That notion carries through to the listing for players turning in Top 1 games against opposing defenses.

Marvin Harrison may not turn in as many good games as you think, but he is tops at turning in the biggest games. Surprisingly, Darrell Jackson matched Randy Moss with three of the best games all season against opposing defenses and the others - Horn, Holt, Boldin and Chambers - only had two each. The rest are more attributed to the one freak high game each season sees from a wide range of receivers.

Receiver consistency is a coveted, valuable asset and there is very little when you consider how many receivers there are to take into account. This report is useful really only with the highest ranked players that are able to show more than once or twice that they truly are the ones that defenses fear.

As with most such analysis, of all positions it is receivers that are hardest to forecast and even their previous numbers are not terribly revealing nor all that predictive outside the top players.

Next up - tight ends!