A full season of Kenny Britt yields … Calvin Johnson?

In writing up the post where I named Matt Hasselbeck the 2011 Tennessee Titans Offensive MVP, I thought about who I would have named in past seasons. 2009, Chris Johnson was an easy call. 2008, I think I did name Michael Roos, in honor of the overall team offensive effort. For 2010, it was Kenny Britt, with whom the Titans were a pretty good offense and without whom, well, they weren’t much of an offense, even with Chris Johnson have a better year and giving more effort than he seemed to give in 2011. That got me thinking to what Kenny Britt could have done with a full season.

Let’s start with Britt’s raw numbers:

Remember, those numbers came in just under two and a half games. Let’s prorate those five halves of football over a full season and see what we get:

Those numbers would be kind of insane. But, you know, somebody actually did come sort of close to those numbers this year. Take a look at Calvin Johnson’s numbers this year:

This seems like an outlandish kind of comparison, doesn’t it? I thought so at first, but here’s some more info.

I don’t use FO’s Effective Yards stat an awful lot, because it doesn’t tell you much DVOA and targets don’t, but it’s a good way of combining the two. And while the catch rate is a little different, those lines look, well, kind of similar.

Obviously many more players have been on that kind of insane pace that have actually sustained that pace for an entire season, and Matt Stafford threw about 15% more passes than Matt Hasselbeck and Jake Locker combined, so Britt’s numbers are even more unlikely to quite match what’s projected here. If you wanted to describe just what Kenny Britt to the Titans in 2011 when he was actually in the lineup, though, you could do a whole lot worse than saying he meant as much to them as Calvin Johnson did to the Lions. Of course, having a healthy Britt for a full season is another thing…