Fantasy Football NFL Air Yards Analysis & Takeaways (Week 13)

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.

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 Tre Tucker‘s 188 air yards all the way down to Josh Downs‘ 46 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 12. 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 12 Air Yards and Air Yards% Data

Top Takeaways From Week 12 Air Yards Data

Good Usage on Terrible Teams

Looking at the Week 12 games from players like Tre Tucker, Adonai Mitchell and Chris Olave, it makes you wonder what their seasons could be like if they played with good quarterbacks. Each had at least seven targets and were in the top eight in air yards for Week 12, but none finished with more than 70 yards, and Tucker and Mitchell had fewer than 50 yards. All three also had at least 50% of their team’s air yards on the Week, so their overall usage was elite. But performances like this remind us that air yards are often an imperfect stat. Air yards can often be quite predictive of future success under normal circumstances. But the wide receiver part is just one side of the equation. Those wide receivers need an accurate quarterback.

Tyler Shough is 26th in true completion rate, Geno Smith is 17th and Justin Fields was 28th (Mitchell now gets Tyrod Taylor, who has a 12.5% deep ball completion rate, which is where Mitchell gets targeted often). While players like Olave can often have fantasy value based on overall volume and a lower average depth of target (aDOT), other receivers like Tucker, Mitchell, John Metchie or even Brock Bowers are likely to suffer in their current set of circumstances.

Wan’Dale Robinson Version 2.0

On the season, Wan’Dale Robinson‘s aDOT is just 8.8 yards, 77th among wide receivers. He played his first five games with Russell Wilson, and then moved to Jaxson Dart and now to Jameis Winston. In 2024, his aDOT was 4.8 yards (106th among wide receivers). But lately, Winston, Dart and the New York Giants’ offense have completely unveiled a new type of player in this version of Robinson. His aDOT in Week 12 was 12.8 yards, and that number is 10.7 yards over the last two games. Robinson is finally getting shots down the field, and it is absolutely working for him.

Robinson was second in the league with 156 receiving yards last week and was first overall with 41.2% of his team’s target share. Imagine a world where Robinson continues to get 30% or more of the targets, and he is targeted more than 10 yards downfield on average. This is the reason why Robinson is tied for 11th overall among wide receivers this season with 130.6 half-PPR fantasy points (the same as Chris Olave, ironically). Since Week 7, Robinson has the seventh-most fantasy points at the position. Whether it’s Winston or Dart going forward, both are looking to get the ball downfield, and Robinson is reaping the benefits. Just keep Russell Wilson on the bench, please.

Rashee Rice‘s Unusual Path to Success

Rashee Rice caught eight of his 12 targets for a total of 141 receiving yards in Week 12’s 23-20 overtime win. This established a new season high in both targets and receiving yards for the Chiefs’ number one wide receiver. Rice’s success was largely due to his ability to gain significant yardage after the catch (YAC), logging a career-high 103 YAC against the Colts. Combined with the high volume of targets, the yards he piled up made him the primary focal point of the passing game, accounting for a 26% target share. But it came with a very unusual caveat.

Rice’s aDOT was just 4.7 yards on Sunday, which was a season low. That number was lower than even players like Greg Dortch and was far and away the lowest among all wide receivers with at least 30 air yards in Week 12. It seems that the Chiefs are not at all interested in Rice catching the ball downfield, but rather in him getting the ball close to the line of scrimmage with lots of space in front of him to make plays. Xavier Worthy, Hollywood Brown and Travis Kelce are all catching passes downfield. But it appears Rice’s value is going to be largely due to what he can do with a massive volume of low air-yard throws.

Add Jayden Higgins

The Houston Texans have been looking for a No. 2 WR all season, and it appears they may have found one in rookie Jayden Higgins. Fantasy football managers should target Higgins due to his increased usage and role in the Houston Texans’ offense, highlighted by his season-high nine targets in Week 12 and a high volume of air yards (117). He was a top-15 player in air yards this week and got unlucky to only come down with four of his nine targets for 28 yards. He did score a touchdown and has proved he is a big, capable target in the end zone this year.

Higgins is gaining a substantial target share and is a primary option for deep passes and red-zone opportunities, making him a strong waiver wire target, especially in PPR leagues. His growing role suggests he can be a difference-maker in the final weeks of the fantasy season. He also had over 100 air yards in Week 11 and another seven targets in that contest.