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 week during the regular season for our breakdown of the week that was in fantasy football air yards.
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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 Michael Wilson‘s 240 air yards all the way down to Mason Kinsey‘s 59 air yards from this past week. 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 10. 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 11 Air Yards and Air Yards% Data
Top Takeaways From Week 10 Air Yards Data
Jacoby Brissett: Fantasy Savior
All it took for the pass-catchers in the Arizona Cardinals’ offense to be fantasy-relevant again was a quarterback change to a 33-year-old journeyman career backup. Marvin Harrison Jr. had a big game before his appendectomy, and now Michael Wilson and Trey McBride are putting up superstar numbers against a good defense like the San Francisco 49ers. Wilson set a season-high in receiving yards for any wide receiver with 185. Only Malik Nabers and Alec Pierce have individual weeks with more than Wilson’s 240 air yards this year.
Arizona, perhaps sensing the weapons they have, is now tops in the NFL with 37.5 pass attempts per game, and that number has exploded to 44.3 over the last three weeks. This means Wilson, Greg Dortch and McBride are all fantasy starters as long as Harrison is out, no matter how much Kyler Murray tried to keep them down in the past two years.
J.J. McCarthy Is Not Getting It Done
Minnesota Vikings wide receivers, including Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, struggled again in Week 11 against the Chicago Bears. Combined, they only had 81 receiving yards, even though they combined for 16 targets and 224 air yards. Despite quarterback J.J. McCarthy attempting 32 passes, Chicago’s defense effectively neutralized the Vikings’ top wideouts, and McCarthy finished with 150 yards and a 50% completion rate. The usage for Jefferson and Addison suggests that they should both have had massive games, given the high volume and downfield attempts.
This is getting to be a significant sample size that might let the Vikings determine that McCarthy just does not have it, at least this season. He is doing the right thing by throwing to Jefferson and Addison all the time. But McCarthy is 38th in true passer rating and true completion rate. What’s worse is that all of this is with 2.93 seconds to throw on average, which is the best time in the league. Jefferson and Addison must get downgraded for the rest of the season.
Is George Pickens the Cowboys’ No. 1 WR?
Looking at Weeks 9-11, the numbers for George Pickens and CeeDee Lamb are staggeringly close. Lamb has averaged 9.5 targets, six receptions, 113 air yards and a 12.3 average depth of target (aDOT) per game. Pickens has averaged 10 targets, 7.5 receptions, 113 air yards and an aDOT of 11.3. The biggest difference is in actual receiving yards. Lamb averaged 76 during that time while Pickens averaged 112. They are similar in everything except yards on the field, where Pickens is excelling, especially in yards after the catch.
On Monday night, the Cowboys’ game looked like the first time where you could see a real shift in philosophy from getting Lamb big shots downfield to getting Pickens deep balls and letting him make plays in space. Pickens had 136 air yards (sixth) to just 54 for Lamb (54th). And if you look at Lamb’s aDOT for Week 11 (7.7 yards), it was lower than any player in the top 50. Wan’Dale Robinson was closest with 7.9 yards. Lamb becoming a short-field option was not something I expected this season, but it is a thing that is starting to happen.
Darnell Mooney: Ready or Not
Drake London had another great game before he got hurt on Sunday. He caught seven of his nine targets for 119 yards and a touchdown. His injury, as well as Michael Penix Jr.‘s injury, will be big blows to the Falcons’ offense the rest of the season. But lost in the shuffle of those injuries is the fact that Darnell Mooney is finally starting to come around, and he is going to be counted on a lot in this passing game moving forward.
London was 20th in air yards this past week with 96 on nine targets. But Mooney had 107 air yards on seven targets. Mooney only caught three of his targets for 34 yards, so the box score doesn’t reflect how much they were trying to get him involved downfield. With no more London, Mooney is about to explode with usage in the next couple of weeks. It will be usage coming from Kirk Cousins, so take it with a grain of salt, but there may be no other wide receiver better-positioned to take a big leap than Mooney right now. His target share was 24% last week. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s 10 points higher in Week 12.
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