Overview
The Overall Trend Index (OTI) summarizes the direction of a player's receiving profile.
Unlike the Overall Score, which describes where a player stands today, OTI describes where that profile is moving.
Its objective is not to measure player quality. Its objective is to measure player development.
What Question Does OTI Answer?
OTI answers one simple question:
Is this player's receiving profile improving, declining or remaining stable?
Rather than reacting to a single game, OTI evaluates movement across multiple analytical time horizons to identify meaningful trends.
Direction, Not Quality
Two players can have identical Overall Scores but very different OTI values.
Likewise, an elite player may have a negative OTI if his receiving profile is gradually weakening, while a developing player may have a strong positive OTI despite having a much lower Overall Score.
For this reason, OTI should always be interpreted together with the Overall Score rather than replacing it.
A high OTI does not mean that a player is better than another player. OTI measures the direction of the receiving profile, not its current quality.
How OTI Is Built
OTI combines the trend strength of every receiving category into a single directional measurement.
Each category contributes according to its importance within the analytical model, allowing OTI to summarize the overall direction of the player's receiving profile rather than the movement of any individual metric.
The exact weighting methodology remains proprietary.
Three Time Horizons
OTI evaluates trend strength using three complementary analytical horizons:
- Momentum : captures the most recent movement over the last few games.
- L5 Trend : measures the intermediate direction using a robust trend model over the most recent five-game window.
- Season Trend : measures the broader structural direction across the current regular season.
These three perspectives are combined to reduce short-term noise while remaining responsive to meaningful player development.
Why OTI May Differ from the Arrows
The category arrows displayed throughout Receiving Intelligence represent the current intermediate (L5) direction for each category.
OTI is different.
It combines Momentum, the L5 Trend and the broader Season Trend into a single directional measurement.
As a result, a player may display positive category arrows while producing only a modest OTI if the longer-term trend is weaker. Likewise, a player with mixed weekly arrows may still have a positive OTI when the broader profile continues to improve.
This behaviour is intentional and reflects the different purposes of the two indicators.
Use the category arrows to understand the current intermediate direction of individual categories. Use OTI to understand the broader direction of the complete receiving profile.
How to Interpret OTI
A positive OTI indicates that the player's receiving profile is strengthening.
A negative OTI indicates that the profile is weakening.
Values near the middle generally indicate that the player's profile is relatively stable.
OTI should always be interpreted together with Baseline, Reliability and the Current Profile before drawing conclusions.
What OTI Is Not
OTI is not a projection.
It does not predict future production and it does not guarantee that a player's trajectory will continue.
It simply summarizes the direction of the current receiving profile based on the information currently available.
Relationship with Weekly Changes
Weekly Changes explain what moved during the latest update.
OTI summarizes the broader direction created by those changes across multiple analytical horizons.
The two concepts complement one another and should be interpreted together.
What's Next
The next article explains Momentum, the short-term perspective used within the broader Receiving Intelligence trend framework.