Week 2 Air Yards Report: Top 5 Takeaways

Welcome, football fans, to the Razzball Air Yards Report. This is the place where we look at thrown footballs (both caught and NOT caught) to try and predict which receivers might have some positive and negative regression coming their way. Week 1 was a wild start to the air yards year, as you will see below.

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If you want a refresher on what air yards are and how to best use them, here are my takeaways from 2022 air yards data. In this iteration of the air yards primer, we will look ahead to Week 2 of the fantasy football season and see who might be due for some positive or negative regression. I hope you will join me each and every Thursday during the regular season for our breakdown of the week that was in air yards. 

Week 2 Air Yards and Air Yards% Data

Below we have air yards and receiving data courtesy of FantasyLife.com. 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 88 wide receivers from most to least air yards. From Tyreek Hill’s 236 air yards all the way down to Treylon Burks’ 24. I color-coded this to make the referencing easier to identify. If a wide receiver was closer to the top of a category, the darker green the number would be. The bottom of the list is primarily orange into red. 

Just an easy eye test from the colors on this chart gives us a significant number of takeaways from Week 1. We will dig into the five biggest things that jump out to me from this dataset. 

Top 5 Takeaways From Week 1 Air Yards Data

Tee Higgins Will be Just Fine

On Sunday against the Cleveland Browns, Tee Higgins grabbed a big fat donut and shoved it in our faces. Zero catches. Zero yards. Zero help to my fantasy teams. But as you can see from the data, he is a severe positive regression candidate moving forward. Higgins was fourth in the league in air yards with 145, and he saw almost 60% of the team’s total air yards. Couple that with a healthy 24% target share, and this is a buy candidate if there ever was one. 

Chalk it up to whatever you want: Joe Burrow rust, weather conditions, smart defensive scheme, whatever. Higgins was a donkey on Sunday. But the usage and opportunity were there. As this offense starts to gel and hum, Higgins will be right there at the front of the wide receiver production line again soon. 

Grab as Much Zay Flowers as You Can

On the opposite end of the Tee Higgins spectrum is Zay Flowers. Flowers caught all the balls – nine of 10 targets for 78 yards. But as he develops a better chemistry with Lamar Jackson, it could get so much better. Flowers was a top-10 wide receiver with his 10 targets and nine catches, but just 83rd in air yards. 

Even though he leads the league in target share after Week 1 (47.6%), Flowers’ average depth of target (aDOT) was just 2.8 yards. How low is that number? Among players with at least eight targets, the 2.8 aDOT was four yards lower than any other receiver (more on him below). That means all his production was due to his 51 yards after the catch. Flowers is incredibly shifty and creative with the ball. Just imagine what will happen with his fantasy production when Lamar starts hitting him 10 yards downfield to make those moves instead of two. 

Don’t Get Too Hyped About Michael Pittman Yet

Michael Pittman was a top-10 wide receiver in targets and catches in Week 1, so it’s fabulous that he already has this level of rapport with Anthony Richardson. Richardson needs a security blanket with all of the injuries to the Colts’ running backs and tight ends, and Pittman can provide that. But what he may not be able to provide is many more days, like Sunday, if he gets drawing only the shortest of targets. 

Pittman’s day was saved by a 39-yard catch and run that was actually caught behind the line of scrimmage. It resulted in a nifty touchdown, but that type of play is generally very hard to repeat week after week, especially for Pittman. Pittman, with a plethora of bad quarterbacks on the roster last year, never had a catch as long as the 39 yards on Sunday. Anthony Richardson is not the best passer God ever designed in the lab, so this looks like a sell-high player or someone with whom we must manage our expectations. 

Treylon Burks Takes a Back Seat

There was a time there towards the end of draft season when some interesting thoughts were percolating about Treylon Burks. The DeAndre Hopkins signing seemingly threw a wrench in the ascension of Burks, but some didn’t see it that way. Burks, after all, is an athletic freak who was drafted with the 18th overall pick in 2022. Hopkins is on his third team in five seasons and is now 31 years old. Hopkins has played 20 total games over the last three years. Won’t Burks take over this season, they said?

Well, no. At least if what we saw on Sunday holds true for the season. Burks only was able to draw 10% of the target share and 8% of the air yards share. Meanwhile, Hopkins gobbled up 39% of the targets and 46% of the air yards. His 12 targets on the day were fourth among all wide receivers. Only noodle-armed Ryan Tannehill was able to ruin Hopkins from a monster day. He was able to catch just seven of those balls for 65 yards. This may not be the most appetizing passing-game pie in the NFL, but for now, Hopkins clearly has the largest piece of it. 

We Were All Too Low on Calvin Ridley

Wherever you drafted Calvin Ridley in the offseason, it looks like it was too low after a one-game sample. Ridley was top-ten in targets, target share, air yards, air yards share, receptions, and yards. He scored a receiving touchdown and is clearly, and I mean CLEARLY, the top receiving option for Trevor Lawrence. He basically put Christian Kirk in a box and shipped him off to Timbuktu with his performance. 

This is going to be a dynamic Jaguars offense in 2023. Jacksonville was ninth in yards per pass attempt in Week 1 (7.5) and averaged 10 yards per completion. Does this mean Kirk and Evan Engram are irrelevant? Unlikely, but Ridley’s stock is going up while the others must go down for now.