NextGen Stats - WR/TE Breakdowns and Takeaways

We made it! We wagered through a long and tedious preseason but real football hit us in the forehead for the first time this season during the past few days and change. But just as soon as it came, it went. The first week of the season is over and we have some tasty numbers already available and ready to be crunched.

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!

Week 1 - TE/WR Air Yards Don't Lie - 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.

As we have only seen one week of action, it would be a little hasty to make too many conclusions out of just one game worth of data. That is why I'm leaning toward receivers (wideouts and tight ends) for the first entry of the series. This doesn't mean Air Yard values are already stabilized, not close to it, but it is highly probable that what we see in Week 1 stays the same at least in the short-term future.

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 5 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.
• I have sorted the leaderboard by CUSH just because it has a little higher relationship with fantasy points. Darius Slayton, one game into the season, is the only player at-or-above a 9.0-yard mark so far. That being said, he could separate a lot from defenders at the catch point (7th-lowest SEP).
• On the contrary, Braxton Berrios finished W1 with the largest CUSH+SEP combination at 12.9 yards. Along with Jalen Reagor, Travis Kelce, and Calvin Ridley, these four were the lone players to break the 12-yard mark.
• Chase Claypool had a day to forget finishing with the lowest CUSH+SEP mark (3.0 yards) while scoring only 10 PPR points. That contrasted with DJ Moore, who was the only player to finish with 15+ PPR points (15.4) while posting a CUSH+SEP mark below 6.7 yards.
• A grand total of 10 players averaged a SEP below 2.0 yards. Of those, only Bryan Edwards and Tyler Lockett were able to catch more than 67% of their targets, both finishing 4-of-5. Mike Williams was the only receiver with more than 8 targets and a SEP below that mark.
• Players with 2 or fewer yards of SEP averaged just 11.0 YAC accounting for 17.4% of their total receiving yards.
• The group of players averaging SEP marks at-or-above 3.0 yards caught 74% of their targets. The one below that mark caught only 59% of theirs.
• Pass-catchers with the smallest CUSH marks (<4.0 yards) went on to catch 67% of their targets while 40.5% of their receiving yards came after the catch. On the other hand, those with high CUSH marks (8.0+) caught 64% of their targets with 31.8% of their total yards coming after the catch.
• 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 point he scores.
• This is made clear by the table above, which I have sorted by Targeted Air Yards% (among teammates). Virtually every player (except Marquez Valdes-Scantling) shown at the top of the table (and in fact, every player with a TAY% of 34%+) reached double-digit fantasy points in W1.
• The only three TEs to get into the top-25 pass-catchers in terms of TAY% after one week were Njoku, Waller, and rookie Kyle Pitts. Atlanta sucked, and Pitts could only score 7.1 PPR points, but the opportunity was definitely there. Njoku and Waller made the cut with wildly opposite aDOT marks (TAY) as Njoku was targeted more than 20 yards downfield compared to Waller's 9.9 "short" aDOT.
• Jalen Reagor and Jarvis Landry were absolute outliers among their peers. Both posted TAY% shares below 8% yet the two of them reached 16+ PPR points in W1. Nothing surprising, considering they went 6-for-6 and 5-for-5 in catches respectively, racked up 49 and 71 receiving yards, and scored touchdowns. One note, though: Landry's lying to us, as his score came on a rushing play. Reagor didn't, making him the true champ of the low-maintenance/fantasy-hitter of W1.
• Oh, and Jalen Reagor also posted the shortest TAY at just a measly 1.1 yards downfield of aDOT. Dalton Schultz and two other TEs followed him all starting at least at 2.3+ yards of TAY.
• Getting back to David Njoku and speaking of tight ends, he was the only player at the position to post a TAY above 13 yards with his 20.7 third-largest mark among all pass-catchers (Lockett and Anthony Schwartz were the only ones to beat him at it).
• One-man offense: Kansas City's with Tyreek Hill eating a monster 73.5 TAY% and Kelce coming in second at just 16.6% (yes, they accounted for 90%+ of all targeted yards on Patrick Mahomes passes).
• Shout-out to Derek Carr and the Raiders for the ball-sharing tendencies. Four Raiders made the cut (5 targets) after one week with all of them posting TAY% of at least 12.4%. Waller dominated (37.8%), but all of Bryan Edwards, Henry Ruggs, and Hunter Renfrow got their fair share (no pun intended) of air yards.
• Vintage-great performance by Rob Gronkowski (29.0), the lone player with 20+ PPR points while getting a TAY%r of just 12.1% (the next best/lowest combination was that of Reagor at 16.9 PPR with a 5.8 TAY%).
• Do you want something shocking? Jameis Winston-quarterbacked Adam Trautman was the lone Saint to qualify (min. 5 targets) for this week's leaderboard while New Orleans players (one, in this case) posted the lowest TAY of all teams on average at just 5.1 yards of aDOT. Makes sense, considering Winston's ridiculous stat line of 144 yards on 20 passing attempts for 5 TDs.

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 29 of 30 (96.6%) players with 6+ receptions reached double-digit PPR points in W1.
• Even more impressive was the fact that 15 of 16 (93.7%) players with 10+ targets reached 14+ PPR points (poor Allen Robinson II had to deal with über-talented CB Jalen Ramsey; ugh).
• Don't overthink it: chase targets when drafting/trading for/acquiring players through waivers.
• Waller and T.J. Hockenson were the only two tight ends with 10+ targets this past weekend. Waller, in fact, leads all pass-catchers with 19 targets in just one game and no questions about his role, which is bonkers-large in Las Vegas. That was a career-high mark for Waller, who is now one of only five tight-ends to ever have a 19+ target game in the NFL.
• Look at that putrid D.J. Chark Jr. stat line (3-of-12, 25% catch rate) and how he still turned it into a WR25 finish with 17.6 PPR mostly thanks to his touchdown and 86 yards on the day. Teammate Laviska Shenault Jr., though, put up a dud becoming the only WR with 7+ receptions to not even reach 13 PPR last weekend.
• No Washington Footie qualified for the leaderboard one week into the season. Yes, that means no Washington Footie pass-catcher got targeted more than 4 times between the Ryan Fitzpatrick-Taylor Heinicke duo on Sunday. Yikes.

"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.
• The top-4 receivers in yardage, all above 130 yards last weekend, racked up at accrued 33% or more of their teams' total air yards. Of course, the top-2 men at it logged shares of 73%+ and 59%+ respectively, working in what we could easily call one-man offenses if only for a day.
• Tyreek Hill and Deebo Samuel arrived at their incredible yard-marks in a completely different fashion: Hill racked up 146 of his 197 yards (74%) through the air, while Samuel got 113-of-189 yards via YAC getting only 40% of his yardage through the air.
• Only two qualified players finished with zero YAC, Kenny Golladay (64 air yards) and Trinity Benson (19 air yards). On the other side of the spectrum, rookie Cardinal Rondale Moore posted a mighty 95.6 YAC% for 68 total yards, of which 65 (!) came after the catch.
• Jalen Reagor and Diontae Johnson were the only two qualifiers to post YAC% above 65 percent and score a receiving touchdown. On the other end, Quintez Cephus was the only player to make the cut with 5+ targets and score a TD while having fewer than 10% of his yards coming after the catch.
• As always, tight ends could mostly be found at the top of the YAC% leaderboard. Of the 24 qualifiers with YAC% marks above 50%, 11 of them (46 percent) were tight ends. Among those with YAC% marks below 50%, only 10 of 64 players (15 percent) were tight ends.
• Only two WRs (Tyler Lockett and Christian Kirk) broke for more than 19 PPR points while posting YAC% marks below 20 percent. Four more players finished with 17-to-19 PPR points and below that mark too. Both Lockett and Kirk scored 2 TDs, boosting their fantasy tallies.

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:

• Don't get too lost in this data with just one week of games in the books. Things will take a little bit of time to stabilize as more reps are factored into the stat lines.
• Take Rondale Moore. The rook posted the largest YAC/R mark at 16.1 yards through 4 receptions for 68 total yards. He only got 3 AY compared to his robust 65 YAC. That won't be the split for long, as it'd be nonsensical over a larger sample of games.
• Deebo Samuel, though posting a wild +/- of 8.1 yards above expectations, still got 12.5 YAC/R on a more than healthy 9 receptions. That should be a stronger set of numbers to hold for a longer span of weeks, though the plus/minus is an absolute outlier that will most probably go down and will definitely not be higher by season's end.
• TE Adam Trautman posted the lowest YACAE among W1 qualifiers (-3.7) but that happened on a small 3-reception sample. Jakobi Meyers, though, completed a rather disappointing game with only 3.3 YAC/R while expected to reach 6.2 for a -3.0 YACAE. Only Jarvis Landry (thanks to a rushing TD) and Marquise Brown (6-for-6 for 69 total yards and a touchdown) were able to finish with 15+ PPR points while having underperformed their xYAC by at least 1.5+ yards.
• The problem with racking up YAC above expectation is that they don't guarantee fantasy success: ask Jalen Guyton. Top-6 plus/minus yet a paltry 7.9 PPR performance in which all he could do was catching 3 passes for a meh 49 yards on the day.
• Among teams with four qualified players, the Raiders group posted the highest YACAE on average at 1.5 yards, followed closely by Dallas' 1.3-yard mark. The Daniel Jones-led Giants were putrid with four qualifiers trailing all squads and underperforming their expectations by -1.4 yards on average.
• Deebo Samuel (and George Kittle, to a certain extent) was enough for San Fran's pass-catchers to lead all teams in total YACAE at 10.6 even though only two Niners made the 5-target cut. Las Vegas ranked second, followed by two-qualifier Cincinnatti (Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins).

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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