Conversely I think receiving yards are way more important. If a guy catches 1 ball for 15 yards and another catches 2 balls for 10. The guy with the 15 yard catch did something more difficult and productive.
I think the opposite is kind of true.
Raw yards are important.
But imagine the guy with a 15 yard catch got a first down.
Now imagine the 2 catches were both 1st downs (both 2nd or 3rd and 5 or whatever). Aren't those 2 first downs more important than the 1?
Now imagine all three catches went for TDs.
Still think that 1 catch was more important than the 2? Because it would be ridiculous to value 1 TD over 2 just because the 1 went for more yards. (Keep in mind context matters much more in small sample sizes. We've all seen 1 or 2 yard plays that were in context more impressive than a 50 yard wide open defensive breakdown, and of course vise versa.)
Let's extrapolate this over the course of a season.
Let's take a guy who has 20 YPC, which is very good.
Let's say he has 50 catches on the season. That gives him 1000 yards. Nice.
Now let's say player B has 100 receptions, which is very good.
And player B averages 7.5 YPC. That gives him only 750 yards. Not great.
Let's say both players got a first down on 80% of their catches.
Player A had 40 first downs.
Player B got 80 first downs.
Suddenly those 100 catches aren't so useless. You are extending drives much more often with the 100 catch guy than you are with the 1000 yard guy in this scenario.
Both are useful don't get me wrong.
There's a reason #1 receivers are almost always high reception guys much more than high YPC guys. Think Irvin vs Harper.
The DeSean Jackson types are valuable, but Welker >>>>> Jackson.
Keep in mind these are extreme examples to make a point. Great receivers tend to have both high receptions and high yards. And I'm not making the argument that a guy with 7.5 ypc is particularly good.
But I am making the argument that receptions are not useless. Far from it.
Guys with a lot of catches over and over and over again are obviously getting open over and over and over again. That's actually really important.