Next Gen Stats Season Review: Wide Receivers and Tight Ends

Time's up! The 2019 fantasy season is done and gone for good. Whether you play in a redraft league or are part of a dynasty format, the days of sitting at the edge of your couch and biting your nails are over. We have a tough eight-month desert to walk through ahead of us, but hey, the real NFL players are this close to kick-off and we will still enjoy football for another month and change, so you better get to it while it lasts! With the numbers in place and the games finished, it's time to wrap up the series and take a final look at who was who during this 2019 season.

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 preseason primer. Now, let's get to the data!

2019 Best and Worst Receivers - Next Gen Stats

The season, at least for us fantasy nuts is finally over. That is nothing good for our enjoyment of the fantasy game, but it is a time of calm and peace to enjoy the real NFL playoffs that we're also invested in. With all of the regular season numbers now in place, it is time to wrap up the Next Gen Stats series position by position.

This week I will go through the receiving positions, covering both wide receivers and tight ends. Today I'll provide a final update on how the league's WR/TEs have done in the different metrics we've already tackled during the season. I will only show a small number of names for each category, present the correlation with the fantasy points averaged by the player, skip the gory-details, and instead provide a new "combined" leaderboard at the end of the column.

So let's dive in. Note: The cutoff is set at 43 targets for both WR and TE.

Cushion / Separation

Correlation with Fantasy Points: negative-15% / negative-24%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• I have sorted the leaderboard by SEP just because it has a little higher relationship with fantasy points. As you can see, most of the 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.
• As already was the case three weeks ago, most of the highest SEP values are attached to tight ends, which is reasonable considering they are often less dangerous and can be given more space. While this has been the case for the best TE of the year on FP/G (Austin Hooper, SEP 3.9), it has not held for other good players at the position like Travis Kelce (3.0), George Kittle (3.0), and Zach Ertz (2.7).
• Only five tight ends are averaging CUSH marks at or over 6.0: Mark Andrews (6.0), Zach Ertz (6.0), Ryan Griffin (6.3), Nick Boyle (6.4), and Jacob Hollister (7.1). That is less significant compared to the 37 wide receivers with such marks, led by Robert Woods (7.5).
• The other side of the CUSH leaderboard is a little more balanced, although not by that much. Three tight ends have CUSH marks at or under 5.0 (George Kittle, Blake Jarwin, Dawson Knox) while 14 wide receivers have such marks. The lowest CUSH among WR belongs to Robby Anderson at 4.2, followed by Preston Williams and John Brown (4.5).
• Only two tight ends are averaging more than 15 FP/G on the season (Austin Hooper and Travis Kelce), but they have very separated values in both CUSH and SEP, which proves the low relation of those metrics with actual fantasy scoring.
• Something similar happens with the top receivers. Michael Thomas and Chris Godwin post the highest fantasy points per game, yet Thomas has a 5.4 CUSH to Godwin's 6.5. Cooper Kupp averages a bit fewer points (he is still WR7 though) and his SEP is of 3.3 compared to Thomas's 2.6 and Godwin's 2.8. Again, nothing really meaningful is present in this set of data points.

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

Correlation with Fantasy Points: 20% / 71%

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). Every player shown at the top of the table (and in fact, every player with a TAY% of 30 or higher) is averaging double-digit fantasy points this season.
• Chris Conley is the first player to average fewer than 10 FP/G (9.0) with the highest TAY% at 29.1 percent. He's just ahead of James Washington (9.4) who has a 28.7 TAY%.
• At the other end, no wide receiver nor tight end is averaging double-digit FP/G with a TAY% under 10. John Ross is the first one to make the cut (14.3 PF/G) while having a 10.1 TAY%. The next player of that profile would be Evan Engram (13.7) with a low 11.1 TAY%, followed by Austin Hooper (16.0) with a TAY% of 11.7.
• Mark Andrews is the tight end with the highest share of air yards, having a 28.9 percent share so far. Kelce is second with 26.1 TAY% and lastly, Darren Waller (25.5%) and Zach Ertz (25.3%) are the only other two even remotely close to those marks, with no other TE getting a 20% share.
• Also through 14 weeks, just three WRs have a share under 10%: Albert Wilson (4.5 TAY%), Russell Gage (8.3), and Mecole Hardman (9.2).

Receptions / Targets / Catch% / Touchdowns

Correlation with Fantasy Points: 86% / 85% / 22% / 73%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• Can we crown Michel Thomas already? This guy is breaking every possible football limit known to man.
• Thomas' catch rate (82.3%) is second only to Ryan Griffin (82.9%). The problem is that Griffin has been targeted 41 times at the tight end position compared to Thomas' 147 as the leading receiver of the Saints. Only two other players with 100-plus targets on the season are averaging catch rates at or over 70%: Amari Cooper (70% on 100 targets) and Chris Godwin (71.7% on 113). Thomas is insane.
• As is always the case with touchdowns, they are important to get some extra juice in the shape of fantasy points, but they aren't that important to have great players around. Look at Robert Woods. He's the WR18 on the season and has only one score to his name.
• None of D.J. Moore (4), Julio Jones (4), and Davante Adams (3) have reached five touchdowns, though all of them are averaging over 16.0 FP/G. At the other end, Darren Fells has scored seven touchdowns yet he only is averaging 7.9 FP/G.

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

Correlation with Fantasy Points: 90% / 84%

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.
• Even with a low average Air Yards value (7.7 per reception), Thomas leads the league in total yards gained through the air with 892. Mike Evans is second (869), followed by Cooper (816).
• That doesn't mean Thomas is not good after the catch. In fact, he's second (532)) in total YAC only behind Chris Godwin (535), with Woods (525) rounding out the top three.
• A total of 24 players have gained more yards after the catch than through the air. Of those 24, only eight are averaging more than 10 FP/G, and only seven are wide receivers compared to 17 tight ends.
• Dallas Goedert's 396 total yards have the highest YAC profile of the league, as only 116 of them are air yards and the other 280 (70.7%) came after the catch. He's the only player in the league with a 70%/30% YAC/aYDS split. Vance McDonald is second at 67%/33%.
• Calvin Ridley and Marvin Jones have the completely opposite profile. Ridley has gained 84% of his yards through the air and Jones 83%, and both of them are virtually averaging 15.0 FP/G.

Yards After Catch / Expected YAC / YAC Above Expectation

Correlation with Fantasy Points: 6% / negative-5% / 11%

Leaders and Trailers: 

Leaderboard Notes:

• Mecole Hardman and John Ross are getting closer and closer to finishing the season with 10-plus YAC/R, the only two players currently doing it. The sample size isn't overly large, as both of them have missed time, but the feat is really incredible.
• A.J. Brown's case is a little more appealing, as he almost doubles the number of targets he has seen over the other two. His 9.4 YAC/R are virtually the same and he has clearly outperformed the expectations with 5.5 YAC/R on the season, good for a second place in the leaderboard.
• There are nine players with an xYAC/R mark at or above 6.0, and three are tight ends. T.J. Hockenson (0.3 +/-) might have fallen a little short of the other two, but Noah Fant (2.4 +/-) should be one to keep our eyes on as his career progresses as he has beaten none other than George Kittle (1.2 +/-) in his limited chances.
• Breshad Perriman's late explosion in the Tampa Bay offense has nothing to do with what he's done earlier in the season. He's got the lowest +/- by far (negative-3.2, with the second-lowest being at negative-1.5 by Kenny Stills) and has clearly underperformed his "after-the-catch chances", although his 296 yards on 19 receptions have been good for 15.6 per receptions and a couple of touchdowns.
• None of these three metrics is meaningful when evaluating players in the fantasy football context. Of players averaging 16-plus FP/G, five have negative +/-, nine have positive +/-, and another one sits at zero.

Combined Next Gen Stats Leaderboard

To build this leaderboard I used every metric that is part of the NGS site and put everything together in a combined score I labeled "NGS" in the following table. The calculation of each player's NGS score is simple. I calculated where each player ranked for each metric and then multiplied that rank for the correlation between that metric and my FP/G metric. Players ranked higher (closer to one) in each category will have lower scores for those categories. In the end, I added up each player's scores from all of the categories getting a single NGS score.

The lower the NGS, the better the player for fantasy as each category was already weighted given its correlation with the FP/G metric. Here are the results:

NGS Leaderboard Notes:

• The rushing and passing NGS-leaderboards were somehow close at the top between at least two players. Not the case here. Michael Thomas stole the show and ran with it in such a massive way that his NGS score of 38.9 points was a stupid 22.2 points better than that of second-best WR Julio Jones. The difference between Thomas and Jones is the same as that between Jones and sixth-best Tyler Lockett.
• Let's recap: Thomas ranked first in four of 14 NGS metrics, second in two, and fourth in another one. He was also the best receiver in FP/G with 23.4 per game, far from second-best Chris Godwin (19.7). No other player finished the season inside the top-five of more categories, with Julio Jones, Devante Parker, and Marvin Jones being the closest ones ranking inside the top-five of four categories each.
• Julio Jones could have been expected to be at the top of the NGS leaderboard, but Parker and Marvin were pleasant "unexpected" surprises. Parker excelled in SEP, YDS, aYDS, and TDs. Marvin did so in SEP, YAC%, TDs, and xYAC. Too bad for the latter, Jones' best numbers weren't part of the most fantasy-impactful metrics.
• Chris Godwin is a great case to study and shows how many of the NGS and advanced metrics we have at hand can be straight discarded when assessing the quality of players in fantasy leagues. Godwin finished the year as the second-best receiver in FP/G yet he only ranked 13th in NGS.
• Kudos to Travis Kelce as he was the only tight end to get inside the 20-best NGS receiving players of the year. Zach Ertz was the 21st-best, a mile away from Kelce. Kelce was also the best tight end in classic FP/G edging George Kittle by a hair. Although Kelce ranked very high in NGS, he only made the top-5 of one metric (total YDS), yet he finished with an average rank of 39th among all qualified (125) players and only edged by Jared Cook among tight ends (Cook finished ranked 39th with all metrics considered).
• Julio Jones was better on average (21st) than Michael Thomas and Stefon Diggs (25th) when taking every metric rank into consideration. Once the correlations were factored in, though, he could only finish second in NGS score while Diggs dropped all the way down to the 19th (!) position.
• The rookie Terry McLaurin wasn't overly great in any metric (he could only rank third in SEP and top-10 in other two categories) but he finished with an overall rank of 30th all metrics considered. A quite promising season for him in Washington and definitely someone to keep an eye on going forward.
• Dede Westbrook had a season to forget. He was expected to be the Jaguars' No. 1 receiver and although he broke the 100-target mark he could only average 10.5 FP/G, a score of 291 NGS (52nd-best), and the worst average rank among all WR/TEs with at least 100 targets (77th).
• Both Robert Woods and Darren Waller had terrific seasons while only catching two and three TDs respectively. Consider a positive regression in that category next season and a bump in both their FP/G and NGS score if that happens. Jared Cook (nine TDs) and Darius Slayton (eight TDs) were "saved" by that highly volatile metric and even with those high numbers, they could only average 12 FP/G and no fewer than 243 NGS points, making both of them highly risky bets come the 2020 season.

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