A few weeks ago, I took a look at the Bucs receivers through three weeks, their potential pro rated numbers on the year and the price per catch, per TD etc.  If you want to go back and read up on it, here is the link.  The numbers I laid out made me want to cringe.  Here are those numbers.

What I wanted to highlighted is their salary makes just over 10% of the Bucs spent money, 10.49% to be exact.  And what do we have to show for that production?

Well, over a 16 game season, assuming each player plays 16 games, the duo will be paid $747,500 per game.  Here's where it gets tricky.  Their current stats are as follows:

Antonio Bryant - 3 catches for 35 yards in two games.

Michael Clayton - 7 catches for 120 yards in three games. 

This breaks down to per game averages (combined) of 3.83 catches for 57.5 yards per game.  Over a 16 game season, at this pace, the duo would reach a combined total of 61 catches for 920 yards.  I'm obligated to say that not only are we working off a small sample, but we're dealing with an injured (to some degree) Bryant.  But using production to date, it's a pretty abysmal set of figures.

Salary wise that would equate into $195,000 per catch or $13,000 per yard.  Not exactly numbers that scream top dollar.  To explain how I got those, I took their combined salaries of 2009 of $11.96 million and divided it by total projected catches and total projected yards. 

Here's the updated numbers through 6 games (above numbers were through 3 games.)

Antonio Bryant - 14 receptions (on 28 targets with 2 credited drops) for 178 yards and 1 TD

Michael Clayton - 11 catches (on 33 targets with 5 credited drops) for 154 yards and 0 TD.

First, in the last three weeks Bryant has upped his catch total by 11 with 143 yards.  Clayton on the other hand only has 4 more catches for 34 yards.  Ugh.

To get back to the numbers of it all, let's remember that their combined 2009 total salary (not counting incentives or bonuses) is $11.96 million, or approximately $747,500 per game.  Their combined stats give us 25 catches for 332 yards and 1 TD.  I broke it down using simple math and found their per game averages (4.16 receptions, 55.33 yards and .16 TD's).  When extrapolated out to get the full 16 game season numbers (based on per game numbers) we found this.  66.67 catches for 885 yards and 2.66 TD's.

Here's the breakdown in dollars:

Per Catch - $17,940

Per Yard - $1,350

Per TD - $448,500

and just for funsies, per drop $64,071

The numbers haven't changed much.  They are up slightly in receptions, down slightly in yards and up one whole TD.  The closest comparison I came across last time was Kevin Walter and Isaac Bruce.  That projection hasn't changed. 

And let's remember, Walter and Bruce put up those numbers individually by themselves at much lower cost.  These numbers above are COMBINED for Clayton and Bryant. 

Let's look at them individually.  Using the numbers above it breaks down to this on a 16 game season.

Bryant - 37.33 catches for 474.67 yards and 2.66 TD's

Clayton - 29.33 catches for 410.66 yards and 0 TD's

Closest comparisons are Jabar Gaffney for Bryant and Justin McCareins.  For that production, McCareins pocketed $1MM and Gaffney received $2MM

This isn't a flawless exercise and has several roadblocks including sample sizes, projections, comparing 2008 to 2009 and so on.  It's just a quick exercise to prove the obvious that are WR salaries compared to production is slightly off.