Analyzing NFL air yards for fantasy football is a valuable exercise for prognosticating what might be coming for certain receivers. If a wide receiver saw a tremendous number of air yards but fell entirely short on receiving yards and receptions, we could make an assumption that will regress in his favor in future games. Conversely, if a player saw a huge spike in receiving yards but did not see the corresponding air yards, that could mean a tremendous number of yards after the catch, which could always vary from week to week.
Looking at a player’s intended usage and not just the surface-level outcomes is a way to more accurately value players in fantasy football. I hope you will join me every Wednesday during the regular season for our breakdown of the week that was in fantasy football air yards.
- Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Pickups
- Weekly Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
- Fantasy Football Start/Sit Advice
- Fantasy Football Trade Tools
NFL Air Yards Analysis & Fantasy Football Takeaways
Below we have a chart representing air yards and receiving data courtesy of the 4for4 Air Yards App. Air yards is a tool that is now freely accessible everywhere, and you can find the site or format that works best for you.
This list represents the top 50 wide receivers from most to fewest air yards. From Malik Nabers‘ 182 air yards all the way down to Tre Tucker‘s 60 air yards. Also included in this list are each player’s targets, receptions, average depth of target (aDOT), target share and share of the team’s air yards.
Showcasing all these pieces of data together provides an opportunity for a quick review of this chart and yields a significant number of takeaways after Week 2. In this weekly piece of analysis, we will dig into the four biggest things that jump out to me from this week’s dataset.
Week 2 Air Yards and Air Yards% Data
Top Takeaways From Week 2 Air Yards Data
Rome Odunze Was Built on This Day
This game may be known as the day Rome Odunze graduated from a highly-touted wide receiver prospect to a superstar wide receiver. Odunze finished the shootout with the Detroit Lions with 11 targets, 200 air yards, 128 receiving yards, two red-zone targets and two touchdowns. Only Malik Nabers, Ja’Marr Chase and Amon-Ra St. Brown had better fantasy performances than Odunze. You may recall that all three were first-round draft picks in fantasy football.
At least for Odunze, Caleb Williams was accurate on this particular Sunday. That will always be the issue with Williams, apparently. But when you give a player like Odunze 33% of the targets and almost 60% of the air yards, good things are going to come with that kind of usage and volume.
One of the knocks on Williams so far has been his inability to throw accurately downfield to receivers. That makes it even more encouraging that Odunze’s average depth of target (aDOT) was 18.2 yards, the 11th-highest number of the week. There will likely be some more speed bumps along the way, but if Odunze continues to see these kinds of numbers, he is slated for a monster year.
Add Dontayvion Wicks
Dontayvion Wicks already had one major thing going for him heading into Week 3. The loss of Jayden Reed opens up quite a bit of the targets and air yards for the rest of Green Bay’s pass-catchers. Romeo Doubs and Tucker Kraft will absorb a lot of them, but we should study how the Packers used Wicks in Week 2 in a game where Reed was absent for most of it. They used him exactly how we want big-player wide receivers to be used.
Wicks saw six total targets in Week 2 and was a top-12 wide receiver with 124 total air yards. That includes a very healthy 315 of the team’s air yards against Washington on Thursday. But those numbers won’t show up in a traditional fantasy football box score. All we will see is four catches for 44 yards, which appears to be much less appealing to the average manager.
Among receivers with at least five targets, Wicks trailed only Tyquan Thornton in aDOT and appears to be the Packers’ new deep threat, while Doubs and Kraft will work the middle of the field. The team is still figuring out what the heck they are doing with Matthew Golden.
Brian Thomas Jr. & Mike Evans Will be Fine
For the second straight week, fantasy managers will look at the results for Brian Thomas Jr. and Mike Evans and be disappointed. Evans now has back-to-back weeks with five receptions and fewer than 60 yards. Thomas seems to be a flashpoint among the fantasy football community after another inefficient game. He has five total receptions for 60 yards this season. But all is not lost. All we have to do is look a little deeper than the surface to see they are trending in the right direction.
Thomas and Evans were fourth and fifth, respectively, in air yards for Week 2. Both had double-digit targets and an aDOT around 14 yards. Both accounted for air yards market shares above 49%. These are truly elite usage numbers and are representative of players who were drafted in the first few rounds of fantasy football drafts.
Thomas has some extracurricular things to worry about, such as an unreported wrist injury and Trevor Lawrence‘s continual accuracy issues. But even Thomas (as we saw last year) can thrive in this environment.
Ja’Marr Chase Trading Distance for Volume?
One of the talking points that has been making its way around social media since Joe Burrow was lost to injury is Ja’Marr Chase’s performance when he has other quarterbacks throwing him the ball. The results are, shall we say, not good. But there may be a silver lining of hope for Chase based on what we saw with him and Jake Browning in Week 2.
Chase saw a whopping 16 targets, more than any other wide receiver by at least three targets. He also caught 14 of them for 165 total yards. How did he catch 14 passes from a mediocre backup quarterback? Chase’s aDOT on Sunday was just seven yards, the second-lowest of the day behind Cooper Kupp.
If Browning prefers a plethora of short passes to Chase, which can then let him make plays with yards after the catch, that will work in terms of making sure Chase doesn’t lose all his fantasy value without Joe Burrow. There may not be many 40-yard bombs in the weeks ahead, but that can be covered by the sheer amount of volume.
Subscribe: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | iHeart | Castbox | Amazon Music | Podcast Addict | TuneIn
