Targets and Air Yards Analysis - NextGen Stats

3 years ago by Antonio Losada

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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!

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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.

With seven weeks in the books, we can 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 but it is highly probable that what we see in Weeks 1-7 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 25 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 and only a few steps into their routes at a time defenders have not closed on them yet.
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.

Tight end Hayden Hurst is not atop the CUSH leaderboard anymore. His CUSH is "down" to 7.8 yards compared to 8+ three weeks ago. All other players inside the top-17 are wide receivers, and Gerald Everett (6.8) is the second highest-ranked TE in CUSH.
Devin Duvernay and Adam Humphries lead the CUSH leaderboard with 8.0+ marks. That said, both of them have 30 or fewer targets. The "true" leader would be Marquise Brown, whose 7.9 CUSH is staying so high even on a bulky 79 targets so far this season.
No surprise in finding Marquise so high up the CUSH ladder as he's got 443 air yards and 6 TDs already on the season while only getting 38.4% of his yardage after the catch. Gotta give him some padding to try and prevent him from burning you down the field, we have to assume.

Three tight ends among the players with the smallest CUSH through W10 as Geoff Swaim (4.3), David Njoku (4.5), and Dawson Knox (4.8) are all into the bottom-five at the stat.
Among players with 70+ targets, Diontae Johnson and Ja'Marr Chase have been the two most-tightly covered wideouts this year with CUSH averages of 4.4 and 4.7 yards.
As far as fantasy points go, the top-20 CUSH players are averaging 9.1 FPPG while the bottom-20 CUSH receivers are averaging a higher 11.2 FPPG on receiving stats.

Allen Robinson II got to escape the last place on the SEP leaderboard, which is now occupied by Miami Dolphins' DeVante Parker (1.8). Not that A-Rob has improved that much, though, ranking second at just 1.9 yards of SEP...
Kyle Pitts, one of the most unique tight ends in the league these days, has the ninth-lowest SEP (2.2) among all qualified pass-catchers through 10 weeks of play. No other tight end is below 2.5 yards (both Cameron Brate and Mike Gesicki are exactly at that mark; the next-lowest is Jared Cook already up at 2.8).

Rondale Moore is still the King of the SEP with his 5.5-yard mark through W10. Nobody is keeping up a SEP above 4.5 (Dawson Knox), so you get an idea of Moore's uniqueness at separating from defenders (whether that is because he's thrown the rock super early in his routes, or just burns secondary-defenders in deep routes).
Tight ends Hayden Hurst and Dawson Knox are the ones with the second- and third-highest SEP marks, followed by WR Freddie Swain. Among players with 50+ targets, though, he'd find Mecole Hardman as the man with the highest SEP at 4.1 yards.

On the manufactured CUSH+SEP leaderboard nobody is touching Rondale Moore's 13.3 yards.
Although Marquise's 3.6 SEP isn't that high, when put together with his 7.9 CUSH it all makes for a top-4 combined finish and the highest among players with 45+ targets.
Both Bryan Edwards and DeVante Parker trail the pack at just 6.7 combined yards, both with similar 4.8 and 1.9 CUSH and SEP marks.
Njoku is the tight end with the lowest combined value at just 7.7 yards.

Averages for fantasy WR/TE with 17+ FPPG: 6.0 CUSH, 3.1 SEP
Averages for fantasy WR/TE with <8 FPPG: 6.1 CUSH, 3.2 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). Every player among the top-25 in TAY% is averaging double-digit FPPG.
In fact, among the top-30 TAY% players only two (Allen Robinson and Nelson Agholor) are below 10 FPPG ten weeks into the season.

Only one player getting more than 45% of his team's air yards, and he's the same as the one the last time we checked: Houston Texans' Brandin Cooks at 45.2 percent.
Six more pass-catchers above 40%, all of them wide receivers. The first tight end to appear on the leaderboard is Kyle Pitts with a 29.4% air yard share in Atlanta.
Deebo Samuel is the only receiver with an AYD share above 32% while posting an aDOT (aka TAY) below 10.3 yards down the field.
Courtland Sutton, on the other hand, has a 38.7% of his team AYD while posting a sky-high 16 aDOT so far this year.

Obviously, the fewer the targets, the lower the team AYD share. But focusing on players with 50+ targets it'd be TE Tyler Higbee trailing all other qualifiers with a measly 7.9 TAY% in the Rams offense. He'd be followed by fellow tight ends Tyler Conklin (11.3%), Dan Arnold (12%), and Dalton Schultz (12.2%).
The lowest TAY% belonging to a high-volume WR is that of Mecole Hardman, who trails the WR-pack at a low 12.5% on 56 targets through W10.

Emmanuel Sanders is getting targeted (TAY) 17.1 yards down the field, the largest mark among qualified players by more than a full yard. Nelson Agholor and Courtland Sutton are tied for second at a 16-yard aDOT each.
No tight end is averaging an aDOT above 11 yards other than Colts' Mo Alie-Cox (11.4). Kyle Pitts and Mark Andrews are the only other tight ends above a 10-yard aDOT on the year.
Slot-Superman Cole Beasley has the lowest aDOT among heavily-targeted receivers with a 5.4 TAY on 69 targets. Hunter Renfrow clocks in second at 5.8 TAY on the same number of looks.

Averages for fantasy WR/TE with 17+ FPPG: 10.6 aDOT, 30.0% TAY%
Averages for fantasy WR/TE with <10 FPPG: 8.9 aDOT, 12.9% 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 29 of 30 pass-catchers putting up 14+ FPPG so far have caught 30+ passes--the only one doing so on fewer receptions is Antonio Brown (29).

The bye weeks are already here and they are interfering with some counting stats. Cooper Kupp has been able to stay on top of the target leaderboard but the gap with no. 2 (now Tyreek Hill instead of Davante Adams) is down to five targets instead of the Week 7 eight-target distance.
Jakobi Meyers and Mike Gesicki are the only two players with 70+ targets averaging fewer than 11 FPPG. Robby Anderson, Mecole Hardman, and Laviska Shenault Jr. are the only two players with 55+ targets averaging fewer than 10 FPPG.

Christian Kirk (83.9%) is the only player catching more than 77% of the targets he's gotten among players with at least 30 targets through W10. On lower volume, TEs C.J. Uzomah and Gerald Everett lead the field at 89.3% and 88% respectively.
Cole Beasley and Hunter Renfrow are the only other two WRs with Catch Rates above 75% on more than 57 targets.
True pass-catching beasts: Chris Godwin (74% on 77 targets), Kupp (73.3% on 116), Michael Pittman Jr. (72.4% on 76), and Jaylen Waddle (71.4% on 84).

Cooper Kupp leads the league in receptions, targets, yards, and touchdowns. That latter category he's leading with 10 scores, followed by Mike Evans (9) and Tyreek Hill/DK Metcalf (8 each).
The most efficient scorer (min. 40 targets) of the year, though, is Hunter Henry with 7 TDs on just 42 targets, scoring a touchdown every 6 targets he gets. DeAndre Hopkins is second already one target per TD down from Henry with 7 TDs on 49 looks.
Only 20 of 127 qualified players have yet to score a touchdown this season... and Jakobi Meyers is not one of them anymore! Meyers has needed 76 targets to get his first touchdown while no other player is past 69 targets with only 1 TD through Week 10.
It's now a pair of Jaguars leading the target leaderboard while having no scores to his name: Laviska Shenault Jr. (57 targets) and Dan Arnold (50) are the two.

"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.
Kupp surpassed everybody in total yards back when he last checked the leaderboard after W7. He's stayed atop, now followed by Deebo Samuel's 979 yards to his 1,141. Kupp also edges Samuel in Y/G 114 to 109 rounding numbers.
All qualified players have racked up 100+ yards so far with Terrace Marshall Jr. trailing all of them at 116, though he's on the verge of qualification with the minimum 25 targets through W10.

All receivers with 500+ receiving yards are averaging double-digit FPPG and an average of 15.5 PPR points through Week 10.
The first player putting up fewer than 10 FPPG on the most yards is Van Jefferson with a 9.7 PPR per game average having caught passes for 487 total yards.

Infamous-and-done-for-good WR Henry Ruggs III is going to qualify for a few more weeks while (most probably) retaining the lead in the YPT leaderboard with 13.0 yards. Among actual, stay-on-the-field receivers expected to finish the season playing with their teams, Kendrick Bourne (on 43 targets) would be the leader at 12.1 Y/T.
Among heavily targeted receivers, though, it'd be down to Ja'Marr Chase and Deebo Samuel with averages of 11.4 Y/T on 73 and 86 targets respectively.
Deebo overtook Kupp in YAC by three yards through Week 10. Samuel has reached 530 such yards while Kupp is sitting at 527.
No other pass-catcher has surpassed 417 (Godwin) while Travis Kelce is the highest-YAC tight end with 397 such yards this season.
Rondale Moore is an absolute outlier when it comes to YAC% as he's gotten 93.6% of his total yards (362) after the catch (only 23 air yards).
Mecole Hardman (308 YAC, 77.2 YAC%) is the only other receiver with more than 171 YAC that is putting up a YAC% above 62%
Only TE Jonnu Smith is posting YAC% above 68 percent at this point. In fact, that mark only trails Rondale Moore's 93.6% on the year.

Kupp, Hill, and Adams lead the league in air yards. They are the only three pass-catchers above 525 such yards, with Kupp the lone one above 547 with 614 aYDS.
Courtland Sutton has been an air-yard beast with 500 such yards compared to 117 YAC (only 19% of his total yardage). He's got the largest gap between both categories among players with at least 506 aYDS through W10.
Marquez Callaway only has added 10.4% of his total 346 yards on after-the-catch moves. Sanders' 14.3 YAC% is the lowest mark among players with at least 500 receiving yards through W10, with Courtland Sutton's 19% clocking in second, but almost five percentage points above Sanders' mark.

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:

Deebo Samuel has been an absolute after-the-catch threat with his 4.6 YACOE through Week 10 of the season. Nobody is less than 0.5 yards closer to his overachievement with rookie Ja'Marr Chase ranking second but already down at 4.1 YACOE.
Samuel, by the way, is putting up 9.8 YAC/R. That, obviously, is a league-leading mark only closely followed by David Njoku's 9.7 and Rondale Moore's 9.4. Only one other player, TE Jonnu Smith (8.1), is averaging more than 7.7 YAC/R 10 weeks into the season.
When it comes to expectations and historic models, though, it'd be Njoku leading the way with a xYAC/R of 7.6 so far, followed by Moore and Jarvis Landry as the only other two pass-catchers at 7.0+ xYAC/R.

Only three receivers are averaging fewer than 2.0 YAC/R: Marquez Callaway, Rashard Higgins, and Keelan Cole. None of them, kind of expectedly, is overperforming their xYAC/R marks with the closest to it being Cole at a -0.2 YACOE.
The player with the lowest YAC/R overperforming the expectations is Darnell Money (2.5 YAC/R to 2.3 xYAC/R).
On the other hand, Jarvis Landry is the only player with an actual YAC/R average above 5.3 yards that is underperforming the expectations, and he's doing it wildly at -1.0 YACOE (6.0 YAC/R to 7.0 xYAC/R).

Receivers averaging 17+ FPPG through Week 10: 1.4 YACOE.
Receivers averaging <10 FPPG through Week 10: 0.5 YACOE.

Receivers averaging 1.4+ YACOE through Week 10: 11.8 FPPG.
Receivers averaging <0.5 YACOE through Week 10: 7.6 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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