NextGen Stats - Wide Receiver/Tight End Breakdowns and Takeaways

We've consumed our first "double-digit week" set of games. That means we've entered the final part of the season and, in fact, the fantasy football playoffs are closer than you may realize. There are just three more weeks to go until we hit Week 14 and celebrate our presence in the run for the chip, or lament the chances we lost along the way by falling short of making it to the final bracket. Now more than ever, no blunders are allowed. You have to know your weapons, have a strategy in place, and trust the leaders on the actual football field to also be the leaders of your fantasy football teams.

To gain the biggest edge in your fantasy football league, it's necessary to understand how to apply the advanced statistics being used in sports nowadays. Back in the day, it was all about wins and losses, passing yards, and touchdowns scored. It's not that those stats are now worthless, they just don't offer enough information to savvy analysts. While football is still in its infancy compared to baseball in terms of analytics, the evolution the sport has seen lately in those terms is notable.

Each week, I'll be tackling NFL's Next Gen Stats, bringing you data from the previous week's games with notable takeaways you should consider when assessing fantasy players for the upcoming week. In case you're new to the series, or Next Gen Stats altogether, I recommend you read our NGS-primer. Now, let's get to the data!

• Quarterback fantasy football rankings
• Running back fantasy football rankings
• Wide receiver fantasy football rankings
• Tight end fantasy football rankings
• Kicker fantasy football rankings
• FLEX fantasy football rankings
• Defense (D/ST) fantasy football rankings
• Superflex fantasy football rankings
• IDP fantasy football rankings
• Dynasty fantasy football rankings

Week 10 - TE/WR Air Yards Breakdown - NextGenStats

If you remember the introductory post to the series, you already know Air Yards tells us the vertical yards on a pass attempt from the line of scrimmage to the point where the ball was caught by the receiver (or the catch failed to be completed.) I will be using mainly two metrics here: Average Targeted Air Yards (TAY), and %Share of Team's Air Yards (TAY%). TAY tells us how many air yards a receiver is thrown per target. TAY% measures the percentage of Air Yards a receiver was thrown at over the sum of his team's total Air Yards.

At this point into the season, we have enough data to assess what and what not is going on at the wide receiver and tight end positions. This means Air Yard values are already stabilized, with high chances of staying on similar levels for the rest of the season.

Today, I'll present each of the stats from the NFL's advanced metrics site, its correlation with receiver fantasy points, and a list of leaders and trailers in each category along with some notes and takeaways on both the players' and the metrics' impact on fantasy football as a whole.

So let's dive in. Note: The cutoff is set at 25 targets for both WR and TE.

Cushion / Separation

Correlation with Fantasy Points: negative-17% / negative-8%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• While the SEP metric "stabilized" itself three weeks ago (similar correlation to last year's), we're seeing something rather surprising in terms of CUSH an its correlation with fantasy points 10 weeks into 2020. The relationship is all the way "up" to a negative-17%, a rather high one.
• At least both metrics have stayed on the negative side of things, which makes sense historically, and naturally.
• Don't get too high on any of those two relationships, though. Neither of them is reaching 20%, so it is not that SEP or CUSH explains a lot about how good a wideout/tight end performs, much less predict future performance.
• Descriptive over predictive, these ones. Keep in mind that that means it's fun to look at the numbers, but not very useful to project future outcomes.

• It took us 10 weeks and four attempts/columns, but Demarcus Robinson (4.8) is not your SEP-leader anymore! He has moved down a spot to second in favor of Isaiah Wright (4.9).
• With Deebo Samuel missing on the min. target threshold but replaced by Wright, it's Robert Tonyan (4.5) once more closing the top-3 in SEP followed by three more tight ends in Kittle, Everett, and Hurst.
• Wright's lead is of just 0.1 yards of separation compared to Robinson's mark. That is down from last week's data, that had Robinson 0.5 yards above then second-placed Tonyan.
• The top-3 in SEP is in a league of its own, though. After Tonyan's 4.5 SEP the next mark sits 0.5 yards below at 4.0, and only two players are at that point (Kittle and Everett).
• While there are five players in the 4.0-to-4.9 SEP yardage-span, there are 57 (!) in the 3.0-to-3.9 yards gap.

• At the bottom of the SEP leaderboard, only four players are separating fewer than 2.0 yards per target: A.J. Green, Kenny Golladay, DeVante Parker, and Mike Gesicki. Two of them (Parker and Golladay) are averaging more than 11 PPR points per game, but the other two are at or below 8.1.
• There are five tight ends in the top-10 highest SEP players, and four in the bottom-10.
• Gesicki is the lowest-ranked tight end at 1.9 yards of SEP, while Tonyan is the highest-ranked TE at 4.5 SEP.
• The qualified tight ends are averaging a SEP of 3.1 yards, compared to the wide receivers' 3.0 mark. Pretty similar outcomes.

• There are 129 qualified WR/TEs in this week's rundown (min. 25 targets). Grouped by team, Kansas City is the squad with the highest SEP on average (3.72) yards, followed by Green Bay (3.50) and Washington (3.45).
• On the other end of the SEP leaderboard, the Dolphins trail every other squad on average SEP among their receivers (2.38), with Minnesota at 2.50 and the Chargers/Tennessee at 2.6.

• While receivers can "control" their separation averages, they can't directly affect the cushion defenders give them. The relationship between CUSH and FP/G has gone up a lot since the last time we checked, sitting at a not-low negative-17% through W10.
• Only two receiver inside the top-20 CUSH leaderboard (highest values) are averaging 15+ PPR per game this season: Calvin Ridley and Amari Cooper. Only two more are averaging more than 12 FP/G.
• In fact, the highest CUSH marks appear next to your typical deep-threat receivers, such as DeSean Jackson or Marquise Brown.
• At the other end of the CUSH leaderboard, the last time we checked, there were 13 pass-catchers with marks below 5.0 yards. There are only six pass-catchers at-or-below 5.0 CUSH yards as of Week 10. Two of them are averaging 19+ FP/G (Davante Adams and DK Metcalf, and Will Fuller V) while three are below 10 FP/G.

• Looking at CUSH from a fantasy perspective, there are currently 23 pass-catchers averaging 15+ FP/G. Of those, only two are at 6.7+ CUSH, and just three more are above 6.5. There are two players at or below 5.0 CUSH, and only two more below 5.4. On average, the 23-player group is averaging 5.8 CUSH yards.
• On the other hand, pass-catchers averaging fewer than 10 FP/G have CUSH marks ranging from 4.6 (Jeff Smith) to 7.6 (DeSean Jackson). On average, the 68-player group is averaging 6.1 CUSH yards.

• Breakdown by teams: the Falcons (6.62), Giants (6.53), and Eagles (6.40) pass-catchers are given the largest CUSH on the league; Green Bay (5.40), Buffalo (5.53), and Cleveland (5.60) are the trailing teams.

• A.J. Green is back leading all pass-catchers in the combined CUSH+SEP leaderboard with a putrid 6.2 yards through Week 10.
• At the other end, Isaiah Wright leads the league at 12.4 yards, the only player above 11.3 (Demarcus Robinson).

Targeted Air Yards / % Share of Team's Air Yards

Correlation with Fantasy Points: 9% / 61%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• Opportunity trumps everything in fantasy football, and it can be seen in the highly related link between the percentage of yards a team/QB throws toward a player and the fantasy point he scores.
• This is made clear by the table above, which I have sorted by Targeted Air Yards% (among teammates). Nine of 11 players (81.8%) with a TAY% above 32% is averaging 13+ FP/G through Week 10, and all except two are at 16+ FP/G. Talk about a sweet relationship.
• At the opposite end, only one (Chris Godwin) of 36 players (2.7%) averaging TAY% shares below 13 percent is currently at 11+ FP/G.

• It sure feels fake, but three players are still gathering more than 40% of their teams' total air yards through 10 weeks of play: Terry McLaurin, Marquise Brown, and Adam Thielen. All of them are a hair above 41 TAY%.
• Nobody else is getting 40+ percent TAY% in the first 10 weeks of the season, and only four players are between 36% and 39%.
• The highest-TAY% tight end is Mark Andrews getting 24% of Baltimore's air yards. He's closely followed by Travis Kelce at 23.9% and Darren Waller at 23.2%.
• All qualified tight ends are getting 14% of their team's air yards on average. All qualified WRs are getting 21.5%.

• Among the 18 receivers at 30+ percent TAY%, only Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Damiere Byrd are doing so while having fewer than 54 targets on the season.
• In that same group, all of McLaurin, Robby Anderson, Stefon Diggs, and DeAndre Hopkins have 86+ targets through W10.

• Of the players getting fewer than 15% of their teams' air yards, Kittle leads the group in total yards gained at 474. He's followed by Randall Cobb (434) and three more players above 400 yards.
• Players below 15 percent TAY% have 270 receiving yards on average through Week 10.
• On the other hand, players above 15 percent of TAY% have an average of 481 yards this season.

• Only two players meet the min. 25 targets through W10 while still having aDOTs above 18 yards: Jalen Guyton (18.8) and Henry Ruggs III (18.4). No other player is above 17.5 yards down the field.
• Obviously, both Ruggs and Guyton have seen 25 targets each, barely making the cut. MVS, with 45 targets and a 17.5-yard aDOT looks much better all things considered. In fact, he's averaging almost 4.0 more FP/G than the other two.
• Pass-catchers with a 14+ aDOT: 10.7 FP/G. Pass-catchers with an aDOT below 8 yards: 9.8 FP/G.
  • Tight ends are averaging 7.8 yards down the field and 9.3 fantasy points per game.
  • Wide receivers are at a 10.9 aDOT and averaging 11. FP/G.

• The 23 pass-catchers currently averaging 15+ FP/G have aDOT marks ranging from 6.2 (JuJu Smith Schuster) to 15.3 (Calvin Ridley).
• Only two tight ends are in this group (Kittle and Kelce) and they have aDOT values of 6.5 and 8.0 yards respectively. The difference comes in the TAY% marks, as Kittle has a low 13.9% share compared to Kelce's sublime 23.9% share in KC.

Receptions / Targets / Catch% / Touchdowns

Correlation with Fantasy Points: 80% / 76% / 28% / 70%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• More than halfway through the season, only one player (Stefon Diggs) has broken the 100-target barrier. Back in Week 7 we were wondering if any of five players would reach that mark by Week 8. Looks like nop.
• Shout-out to Diggs, as he deserves all of it. The first man to 100 targets this year, and the only one to do so through Week 10 with Allen Robinson II clocking in second but already seven targets below him, which is roughly an above-average usage game for a wideout. Not bad for the new Bill.

• The truth is, though, that Diggs hasn't been that impressive. His 102 targets are great in terms of volume, but he's caught just 71.6% of those passes which ranks 36th in the league...
• DeAndre Hopkins lost some ground to Diggs as he went on a bye and now has 88 targets. That being said, his 76.1% catch rate is still the 14th-highest and he's one of only three players with 81+ targets and a completion rate above 74%.

• Tyler Boyd is the only receiver with 60+ receptions currently getting fewer than 27% share of his team's TAY.
• Both Cole Beasley and JuJu are getting only 17% TAY among their teammates while having 42+ receptions. No other player has such a low TAY% with at least those receptions through W10.

• All three pass-catchers with 9 TDs on the year have TAY% of 29% or more. The two players with 8 TD, though, are separated widely with Metcalf at 35.8 TAY% and Mike Evans at just 21.9%.
• Robby Anderson has been trusted, and great at receiving. The problem has been the low touchdown scoring with just one TD over the season. He's the only player with a 32+ percent TAY% and one or none scores.
• A.J. Green and Damiere Byrd have TAY% mars above 30% but none has scored a touchdown through W10.
• Marquise Brown's 41.5% TAY% share is the second-highest in the NFL, but he's only scored 2 TDs so far this season. He's making most of his damage through the air, but a low YAC% is killing his scoring upside.

• Diggs needs only 94 more yards to reach the 1,000 on the year. Buffalo is going on a bye in W11, though, so he'll have to wait for it. Hopkins needs 139 himself, so there is a chance he gets there in W11 with Diggs out if everything clicks for Nuk this upcoming weekend.
• Only three players (Diggs, Hopkins, and Metcalf) have 800+ receiving yards already. Both Diggs and Hopkins needed at least 67 receptions to get there. Metcalf did it on just 45 (!) of them.

• MVS and Guyton are the only players above 20 Y/R, with 22 and 14 receptions respectively and 463 and 294 yards this season.
• Justin Jefferson leads all receivers (min. 40 receptions) in Y/R at 18.14. He's closely followed by Metcalf's 18.13 though.
• Mike Gesicki leads all tight ends in Y/R at 15.5 yards. Mo Alie-Cox is second at 14.7, while Jared Cook and Travis Kelce are tied for third at 13.3.

• Positive TD-regression watch: Green, Landry, Fitzgerald, Robby, Engram, Amari, Gallup, Gage.
• Negative TD-regression watch: Agholor, Jonnu Smith, David Moore, Cook, Gabriel Davis, Higbee.

Yards / Air Yards / YAC%

Correlation with Fantasy Points (based on the 2019 season): 86% / 77% / negative-3%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• If you didn't read the section above, let me repeat it here: shout-out to Diggs for becoming the first 900-yard player of the season. The trade paid off, for sure.
• That doesn't mean we're going to praise Diggs for his after-catch work, though, as he only has racked up 27.5% of his total yards after getting the ball.
• Hopkins, on the other hand, has a great 38.9 YAC% and a much more balance pass-catching, yard-gaining profile.

• Of the 54 pass-catchers with 50+ targets this season, the YAC% marks vary wildly from 61.8% (Robert Woods) to just 16.4% (Calvin Ridley).
• The top-10 receivers in YAC% among those 54 are averaging 13.6 FP/G. The bottom-10 are averaging 11.8 FP/G.
• Looked at it from the other side: the top-10 of those in FP/G are averaging 34.4 percent YAC% while the bottom-10 sits at 35.8 YAC%.

• The 29 qualified tight ends are getting an average of 43.5% of their total yards after the catch. That is way above the wide receivers' mark of 35.2%. Nothing surprising, considering most receivers are faster than TEs but have less strength.
• Only eight qualified players have racked up fewer than 100 yards through the air, three tight ends, and five wide receivers. Drew Sample has the most total yards among the players in that group with 183.

• With 43 targets (and although he is now out for the year) OBJ ranks dead-last in YAC% at just 13.2 percent. Ridley is second-lowest at 16.4%.
• On the other side, Isaiah Wright is the only player above 64 percent YAC%. The closest player to Wright is Cedrick Wilson (63.1%), but he only has 25 targets. Woods is third (60 targets) at 61.8% with Drew Sample (61.2%) the only other pass-catcher above 61 percent.

Yards After Catch / Expected YAC / YAC Above Expectation

Correlation with Fantasy Points (based on the 2019 season): 13% / negative-2% / 25%

Leaders and Trailers: 

Leaderboard Notes:

• While the relationship between these three metrics and fantasy points isn't great, the YAC Above Expectation (+/-, or YACOE) is strong enough to consider it somehow meaningful. It makes sense, as talent ultimately rises to the top and those posting more YAC than it has happened through the history of the model are more often than not the better players overall.
• These are only yards after the catch, though, and not total yards (meaning we're not factoring air yards into the equation).
• That is why some fantasy (and real-life) monsters such as Stefon Diggs and Tyler Lockett are averaging 18+ FP/G while having a negative-0.5 YACOE each. They are unstoppable on the passing game, but they do most of their work before catching the ball while looking bad in the YAC department (I don't think they're too worried about it judging by their seasons, though...).

• Let's cut straight to the point, which is YACOE marks in this section in order to find the most efficient players at racking up yards after the catch.
• Jamison Crowder led the way in Week 4. The no. 1 spot was taken by Deebo Samuel in Week 7, and it now belongs to Jalen Guyton at 3.3 YACOE over the season.
• The problem I find with Guyton's mark, though, is that he's posting it while having just 25 targets, making the cut by a hair.
• Your real, more steady YACOE-MVP would then be A.J. Brown, who is the only other player at 3.0+ YACOE over 10 weeks of play. Justin Jefferson (2.7) and Terry McLaurin (2.5) close the "top-3"--if we don't take Guyton's mark into account.

• The correlation between the top-10 players in YACOE through W10 and their fantasy points can't be higher.
• Every player in that top-10 except Guyton (6.6 FP/G) is averaging 13+ FP/G, and 7 of the 10 are at 15+ FP/G marks this season.
• All of the top-10 players are posting 2.0+ YACOE except Chase Claypool (1.9), but Claypool is one of the WRs averaging 15+ FP/G this year.
• There is only one tight end in that top-10 YACOE leaderboard: George Kittle at 2.0 YAC over expectation and 16.4 FP/G.

• Between all 129 qualified pass-catchers (min. 25 targets), they are averaging 0.5 YACOE, which means the receiving game is a bit better this season than it has historically been when it comes to getting yardage after the catch.
• As we're already deep into the season with more than half of it in the books at this point, that average isn't skewed by outliers. 59 of the 129 qualified receivers (46%) are averaging 0.5+ YACOE marks over the year, and the rest (54%) are below that mark, which is a very balanced outcome.

• Only 38 of the 129 receivers (29%) are currently under-performing in YACOE, having marks below the neutral/average 0.0.
• Of those 38 "underperforming" players, nine (24%) are tight ends and the other 29 are wideouts (76%).

• Something interesting going on in the YAC leaderboards. Only two players have xYAC of 7.0+ yards: Henry Ruggs III and Robert Tonyan. I think the difference in their styles is clear, and while Ruggs high expectations are based on open downfield routes, Tonyan's are more geared toward open holes in shorter pass-coverages.
• Even with that being the case, Tonyan and Mo Alie-Cox are the only two tight ends at 6.0+ xYAC this season, and they are surrounded by the likes of Ruggs, Mecole Hardman, or Cedrick Wilson.

• There is only an inconsequential 1% relationship between xYAC and YACOE. For example, Ruggs' 7.8 xYAC is the highest, yet he's posting even more at a 0.8 YACOE, while Tonyan is underperforming his xYAC by a negative -2.2 YACOE.
• Of the 25 players with an xYAC of 5.0+ through W10, 18 are overperforming those marks by 1.2 yards on average, while only seven are falling below their expectations after the catch. Removing Guyton's and Tonyan's outlier-values, the average YACOE for the other 23 pass-catchers with 5.0+xYAC sits at 0.7 yards after the catch above expectation.

• Mo Alie-Cox is the only player with 6.0+ YAC (real) that is actually underperforming his expectations (-0.3) of 6.3 xYAC.
• Danny Amendola (44 targets) is the only receiver still to score a touchdown while having a YAC average of 5.7 or more. Drew Sample (28 targets) is the only tight end without a TD among all players with at least 5.6 YAC per reception this season.
• On the other end, only Calvin Ridley (6) and Adam Thielen (9) have scored 6+ touchdowns while posting YAC marks below 2.6 yards.

• Terry McLaurin has amassed the most YAC this season with 410. No other player is even at 380 yards after the catch through W10 (Travis Kelce, 377).
• While Kelce ranks second in total YAC (377), no other tight end is above 252 (Darren Waller, 12th overall).
• Only Odell Beckham Jr. (41) and Zach Ertz (48) have accrued fewer than 50 YAC through W10 while having at least 34 targets.

• On a per-target basis, Mecole Hardman leads the NFL with 6.0 YAC per target. No other player is above 5.4 YAC (Justin Jefferson) and only four more players are at 5.0+ YAC/Target.
• Kittle and Alie-Cox are the leading tight ends in YAC/Target with 4.8 each.
• Only three players are at 1.0 YAC/Target: DeSean Jackson (25 targets), Odell Beckham Jr. (43), and A.J. Green (68). Zach Ertz (45) is the worst tight end and fourth-worst overall pass-catcher at 1.1 YAC/Target.

• Mecole Hardman is also the players with the most YACOE over the year at 143 thanks to his 2.5 extra YAC per reception. Jefferson is second with 113. No more players have reached 100 total YACOE yet.
• Robert Tonyan should have 59 more YAC than he actually does, which is normal considering his atrocious -2.2 YACOE.
• Stefon Diggs (-37 total YACOE) and Damiere Byrd (-31) are the only other two pass-catchers with more than 30 yards below expectation.

• Adam Thielen and Calvin Ridley are the only players with 13+ FP/G on the year that are averaging 2.5 or fewer YAC through W10. They are WR13 and WR8 this season.
• Diggs, Lockett, and Adams are the only players with 14+ FP/G currently underperforming their xYAC. Even then, they are all ranked WR7 or better

That's it for today. Until we meet again next week, I hope you can crush your waiver wire, set up the best possible lineup, and get ready for another weekend full of fireworks!

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