Targets and Air Yards Analysis - NextGen Stats

I can't believe it. Months of waiting, painful empty weekends, and now a quarter of the NFL season is suddenly gone! But I'm not going to lie, I love the moment when the whistle blows to end the week on Monday nights. It is just the confirmation that we have another full round of data in our hands, and for a nerd like me, that's great. As a reader that likes this type of content, you might feel the same.

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!

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Week 4 - 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.

With four weeks in the books, we can (at least moderately) say that we have enough data to assess what and what not is going on at the wide receiver and tight end positions. This doesn't mean air yard values are already stabilized, not close to it, but it is highly probable that what we see in Weeks 1-4 stays mostly the same at least in the short-to-mid-term future, with high chances of staying on similar levels for the full 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 10 targets for both WR and TE.

Cushion / Separation

Correlation with Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): negative-20% / negative-9%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• Most players with high SEP values are tight ends. That comes down to them not being covered as tightly as other, more skillful receivers. Also, tight ends are often used as security blankets, so they're thrown passes only when they're quite open.
• Most tight ends also find it hard to really separate from defenders because of their frames and how their bodies are built. Let's say they're not speedsters.
• Three players are still putting up an average CUSH of 8.0+ yards, which is interesting given that we're four weeks into the season already. That being said, only Mike Gesicki has more than 15 targets among those in that group of five.
• Deonte Harris, second in CUSH, has a rather large TAY mark too with a 13.7-yard aDOT in his 15 targets for 11 receptions and 164 yards.
• Two tight ends are at 8.0+ yards of CUSH through Week 4 (Gesicki and Hayden Hurst), but no other tight end has a mark higher than 7.1 (George Kittle and Mark Andrews).

• Of the bottom-22 players in CUSH (all below 5.0 such yards), 14 of them are tight ends and none is above a 4.8 mark (Jordan Akins, Dalton Schultz, Jonnu Smith).
• In fact, nine of the bottom-15 CUSH averagers are tight ends, including the shortest-CUSH averager TE Albert Okwuegbunam (4.0 yards).
• DJ Moore has the second-lowest CUSH among qualifiers and the lowest among WRs at 4.1 yards.

• Rondale Moore is just uncatchable. Even while giving him 7.4 yards of CUSH on average, he's putting up a league-leading (by a mile) 7.0-yard SEP on top of that. Nobody other than Freddie Swain (5.5 SEP on a small sample of 12 targets) is above 4.6 yards of SEP.
• As expected looking at those marks, Moore leads all qualifiers in SEP+CUSH at 14.4 yards. He's followed by Adam Humphries (13.8), Swain (13.5), and Hurst (13.1). No other qualifier is above a combined 12.9 CUSH+SEP yards.

• Bryan Edwards, Allen Robinson II, and DeVante Parker are the only three players with SEP marks below 2.0 yards four games into the season. All of them play at the WR position and have at least 17 targets so far.
• Jordan Akins has the lowest SEP among tight ends at just 2.0 yards. The next-lowest mark belongs to Kyle Pitts with 2.3 such yards at the point of the catch.
• Contrary to what happens with CUSH, as many as six of the 11 pass catchers with the highest SEP marks are tight ends. On the other end, just three tight ends have SEP marks below 2.5 yards (Darren Waller, Pitts, and Akins).

• Averages for fantasy WR/TE with 18+ FPPG: 5.2 CUSH, 3.1 SEP
• Averages for fantasy WR/TE with <10 FPPG: 6.1 CUSH, 3.1 SEP

• In a few words: don't rely on CUSH or SEP. Those are a couple of descriptive, not predictive stats and often come in all shapes and sizes without much predictability to them.

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

Correlation with Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 0% / 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 points he scores.
• This is made clear by the table above, which I have sorted by Targeted Air Yards% (among teammates). Virtually every player (except Darnell Mooney; blame HC Matt Nagy and the inept Bears quarterbacking) that appears at the top of the table (all of them with a TAY% of at least 34 percent) are averaging double-digit FPPG.

• The Texans stink quite a bit this year, but that's not surprising if you've been following the late developments around the squad--that is, for the past few months. It isn't surprising to see Brandin Cooks at the top of the TAY% leaderboard, but it is surprising to find him racking up a massive 55.7 TAY%, not even close to the second-highest mark of 48.2% by Calvin Ridley.
• The top-five players in TAY% are all above a 44% share of their respective team's air yards. That's cool, and (mostly) makes sense given their names and teams they play for. With the exception of DK Metcalf, at least to my eyes. Lockett is inching closer (36.4%) so this situation might change sooner than later, but having Seattle as a one-man offense through the air is kinda interesting with a quarter of the season gone.

• Only three players with TAY% below 10 percent (Dallas Goedert, Dawson Knox, and Rondale Moore) are averaging double-digit fantasy points per game so far this season. All of them have scored at least 1 TD already.
• Tight ends are at the absolute bottom of the TAY% fairly often. Of the 40 qualifiers at the position, as many as 31 have TAY% marks below 15%. Of those 31, as many as 26 rank in the overall bottom-40 (TEs and WRs included).
• Even though Darren Waller leads all tight ends in TAY% with a 27.5 percent share, his teammate Henry Ruggs III is still above him at 28.5%. That means not a single tight end leads his team in TAY% through Week 4.

• Veteran DeSean Jackson popped on W4 with a touchdown for the Rams, his first of the year. As he's only been targeted 10 times so far, his numbers are staggering all across the board, including his league-leading 21.2 aDOT.
• Only three more players are above 18 yards of aDOT, and two of them are injured: Marquez Valdes-Scantling, KJ Hamler, and Odell Beckham Jr.
• None of the four players highlighted above has been targeted more than 16 times, though. The first one of the "high-volume" players in the TAY category would be Courtland Sutton at a 17.3 aDOT on 28 targets.
• David Njoku has the highest aDOT among tight ends, already at a low (in comparison to WR-marks) 12.2 yards downfield.
• Harrison Bryant, also a Cleveland Brown, ranks second at an 11.0 aDOT. Mark Andrews, at 10.9 yards, ranks third and is the first non-Brown in the tight end/aDOT leaderboard.
• Up to 35 qualifiers have TAY marks at or below 7.5 yards. Of those 35, as many as 25 play at the tight end position.
• Interestingly enough, it's not a tight end trailing in aDOT, but actually WR Rondale Moore with a paltry 2.1 aDOT four games in.

• Averages for fantasy WR/TE with 18+ FPPG: 9.7 aDOT, 33.7% TAY%
• Averages for fantasy WR/TE with <10 FPPG: 9.6 aDOT, 13.7% TAY%

Receptions / Targets / Catch% / Touchdowns

Correlation with Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 83% / 79% / 33% / 70%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• Obviously, receptions trump targets in terms of fantasy-point production (in PPR formats, that is) because well, they hand out actual fantasy points. That's why 10 of 11 pass-catchers putting up double-digit FPPG so far have caught 23+ passes--Rob Gronkowski (16) is the lone exception but that's mostly because of his outlier-ish 4 TDs in three games played.
• Speaking of tight ends, Tennessee is the only team not to have a TE qualified through Week 4. In other words, no Titans tight end has reached 10 targets this season, even with A.J. Brown and Julio Jones banged up a bit.
• A tight battle so far for the target-lead, with nine players at 40+ targets so far this season. Most interestingly: there is one tight end in that group as Darren Waller reached 40 this past Monday after getting almost half of those (19) in a single game back in Week 1.
• Something different is happening on the reception front (to a certain extent) as only four players are at 30+ while then there is a two-reception jump from the fourth to the fifth place where three players sit at 28.

• There are always interesting stats to discuss... but Jaylen Waddle's and Tyreek Hill's Catch Rates of 80.7% and 79.0% respectively are wild considering both have been targeted at least 31 times. No other pass-catchers are sustaining such levels of reliability on such a high volume of targets.
• As expected as it is because of the nature of the position, TEs rank way high on the CTCH% ranks. In fact, more than half (15) of the top-27 players in terms of Catch Rate are tight ends.
• The three-highest CTCH% rates belong to tight ends, and those three players (Maxx Williams, Hurst, and Okwegbunam) are all at a 90%+ Catch Rate (topping at just 16 targets, though).

• Kupp's five touchdowns are fantastic and lead the league. He's gotten there on a bulky league-leading 46 targets too, so it's not that we shouldn't expect some sort of production close to what he's actually producing.
• Gronkowski's and Knox's 4 TDs, though, are wild. They both have those scores after getting targeted only 20 times so far this season, making them highly unsustainable performers and not-fully-trustable pass-catchers going forward because that pace is absolutely insane.
• Even more ridiculous is Saints' tight end Juwan Johnson line through Week 4: 10 targets, 6 receptions, 64 receiving yards... and three touchdowns. In other words, Johnson is scoring a TD every 3-and-change targets, every couple of receptions, and all of that while averaging 10+ YPR. Definitely not something I'd bet will continue happening.

• Of the 140 qualifiers through W4 (min. 10 targets), 40 pass-catchers have yet to score a touchdown. Jakobi Meyers has the most targets among those in that group with 41 (27 receptions), and George Kittle leads all tight ends with 29 targets (19 receptions).
• Michael Pittman Jr. (12.7) and Chase Claypool (12.0) are the only two players averaging 12+ FPPG while not having scored a single touchdown. Both of them have 211+ receiving yards and 15+ receptions on the year.
• Courtland Sutton and Darnell Mooney have not scored a touchdown yet, though they are the only two players in that group with a TAY% at 40+ percent.

"Total" Yards (Air Yds + YAC) / "Air" Yards / YAC%

Correlation with Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 88% / 79% / negative-3%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• Nothing surprising here, as receiving yardage is factored into the calculation of fantasy points without much hard math involved. Leaders in yardage average the most fantasy points, with the touchdowns and receptions just being a weekly bonus to their tallies.
• Breakout season for Deebo Samuel, who is leading all pass-catchers in yardage with a quarter of the season already on the books and just 10 yards shy of breaking the 500-yard barrier.
• Not a coincidence that all receivers with 300+ receiving yards are averaging 17.4+ PPR points through Week 4.
• Only one player with fewer than 300 yards so far (Ja'Marr Chase, 297) is averaging more than those 17.4 PPR points per game (17.7).

• Only 39 of the 140 qualifiers have yet to reach 100 yards on 10+ targets with Anthony Miller trailing all of the league at just 23 yards on 5 receptions (11 targets). That being said, one of those receptions went for a TD, something no other pass-catcher with fewer than 57 yards has achieved through Week 4.
• Only DeSean Jackson (147) and David Njoku (111) have 75+ receiving yards while having the bare minimum 10 targets.

• As fantastic as Deebo's production and yardage has been, 275 of his 490 yards came after the catch. That means he's accrued 56.1% of his total yardage on YAC, ranking in the 83rd percentile of YAC% among qualifiers.
• Obviously, no player is even close to no. 1 YAC% pass-catcher Rondale Moore, who boasts 94.8 percent of YAC. He's got 211 yards on 16 receptions, and only 11 of those were aYDS compared to his massive 200 YAC.
• Jonnu Smith is second in YAC% at 88.6%, while Robert Tonyan, Mecole Hardman, and Kadarius Toney are the only other players above 74% (all of them at 81.5+ percent).

• Both San Francisco (Deebo and Kittle) and Kansas City (Kelce and Tyreek) have two players with 135+ YAC through Week 4, the only two teams with two such players/marks.
• Tyreek Hill, on top of that, is on a league of his own when it comes to aYDS: 318 air yards on the season and a 28-yard gap with second-highest aYDS qualifier Brandin Cooks (290). Terry McLaurin is third already down at 259 aYDS himself.

Yards After Catch / Expected YAC / YAC Above Expectation

Correlation with Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 6% / 0% / 11%

Leaders and Trailers: 

Leaderboard Notes:

• Shouts-out to out-of-left-field Quez Watkins and his monster 6.2-yard YACAE. Kudos to C.J. Uzomah for his 4.7 mark, too. But ultimate praise must be sent Deebo's way as he's the only player with more than 20 targets currently posting a plus/minus above 2.5 yards.
• Of course, Deebo is the only player at a YACAE higher than 2.5 yards averaging more than 10 FPPG.

• Rondale Moore has an impressive 3.7 plus/minus, but even more incredible are his ridiculous 8.8 xYAC. Those speak of Moore's ability to getting open.
• If we're talking about monster marks on the xYAC front, though, we can't overlook both David Njoku (9.4) and a freakish DeSean Jackson (13.8). Obviously, the two of them have only 10 targets each on the season clearly skewing the outcome, but even then those numbers are ridiculous to look at.
• Funny fact: DeSean's 13.8 xYAC are so high that it's always going to be virtually impossible for him to have an actual YAC/R above that mark. Well, he's super close with a 13.3 mark only -0.5 yards below expectations.
• The other three players posting YAC/R of 10+ yards so far are all boasting YACAE marks of at least 3.7 yards. Only, none of them is above 8.8 xYAC compared to DeSean's outlier 13.8 mark.

• Darius Slayton and Evan Engram, both New York Giants, rank in the bottom-three of YAC/R with 1.1 and 1.8 yards respectively and sandwiching Parris Campbell (1.7). Both Slayton and Engram have a similar -1.3 yards YACAE.
• Marquise Goodwin (1.1) is the lone pass-catcher with an xYAC below 2.0 yards. He's obviously overperformed with 3.0 YAC/R and 1.9 YACAE marks.
• That being said, the two players with xYAC marks of 2.0 (Brandon Aiyuk and A.J. Brown) are both at just 0.0 and 0.2 YACAE through Week 4, not doing much at all to boost their receiving yards with runs after the catch.

• Getting back to Big Blue, TE Kyle Rudolph has been the worst underperformed so far and the lone player with a -2.0 YACAE mark four games into the year.
• Elijah Moore, also of New York (Gang Green this time, though), is the only other player below -1.5 yards the YACAE leaderboard.
• The bottom-eight players in YACAE are split evenly with four WRs and four TEs making that group.

• Ravens' Marquise Brown is the only player below -1.0 YACAE averaging more than 8.6 FPPG. Brown is putting up 17.4 PPR points per game, though that's mostly because of his 3 TDs on the year.
• Only 21 of 53 players (40%) currently underperforming their xYAC expectations are averaging 10+ FPPG through Week 4.
• Exactly half of the 80 players overperforming their xYAC marks are averaging 10+ FPPG.

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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