Now that the Green Bay Packers shoved, stumbled, and intercepted their way out of the playoffs, the 2022 NFL regular season is officially in the rearview mirror. For the 2022 fantasy season, we looked at air yards for wide receivers each week to try and determine trends and positive or regression candidates. Now that we have the full season’s worth of data, here are a few players we can expect to positively and negatively regress based on their production relative to their air yards.
(For an Air Yards primer, click here for the 2022 version)
Positive Regression Candidates
Chris Olave
For a rookie who faced, shall we say, a questionable quarterback situation all year, Chris Olave had an exceptional year. He amassed 1,686 air yards this season (sixth among all wide receivers), 1,042 receiving yards, and four touchdowns. His 14.2 average depth of target (aDOT) was second among all receivers with at least 90 targets on the year (only Gabe Davis was higher). But the unfortunate pairing with Andy Dalton caused Olave’s season to never live up to what it could have been.
Consider this. Of the top ten wide receivers in air yards this season, Olave was one of two who did not reach 1,130 yards receiving. If you average the receiving yards for the other nine receivers in the top ten of air yards, you would get 1,230 yards. Olave only had 1,042 and had to have a big last day of the season to even cross 1,000 yards in 17 games.
His 14.1 aDOT is elite and means Olave has the opportunity to catch plenty of long bombs, but those need to be successful and accurate targets. Andy Dalton’s deep ball completion percentage was just 31.4% in 2022, the 30th best among all quarterbacks. Quarterbacks don’t deserve all the blame in a stat like that, but it’s clear the Dalton-Olave long ball didn’t work as well as they hoped in 2022.
Another indicator of those deep balls being off-target is Olave’s yards after catch numbers. His 182 YAC were outside the top 50 at the position this year and were fewer than players like Kalif Raymond and Josh Palmer.
I can only imagine that the Saints address quarterback in the draft, probably on the first day. It will be interesting to see who Olave ends paired up with and how they can build on the strong foundation that was established in 2022.
Diontae Johnson
Surely by now, you have seen the history Diontae Johnson made on Sunday that he is undoubtedly unhappy about.
Diontae Johnson has 882 receiving yards without a TD, the most in NFL history for a single season, breaking Raymond Barry’s record. (1961)
Combined with his 140+ targets, 80+ receptions, and 32% target share in the red zone, his season is a legendary statistical anomaly. pic.twitter.com/N5H9SvxrN4
— Django (@DangoDjango_) January 8, 2023
To make matters even worse, Johnson was tackled at the two-yard line after a long catch on Sunday, stopping the chances he would get his first score of the year. Basically, Diontae Johnson is the same story as Chris Olave. Initially, poor quarterback play and inaccuracy issues that plagued him all season. Only Johnson and D.J. Moore have more than 1,500 air yards in 2022 and did not reach 900 yards.
Moore, however, managed seven touchdowns, while Johnson was the only player with more than 575 air yards that did not have a score this year. I mean, even Robby Anderson and Trent Sherfield scored touchdowns this year.
There were a lot of growing pains in Pittsburgh as things transitioned to Kenny Pickett by season’s end, but Pickett evolved quickly towards the end of the season, and he should be able to fully support a comeback-like award in 2023.
Negative Regression Candidates
Chris Godwin
Except for one game in Week 17 when Tom Brady made Mike Evans look like he was a celestial being walking among mortals, the GOAT was rather ordinary this year. Tom Brady may have set single-season records for most pass attempts and completions in one season, but he looked closer to his real age of 45 than at any point in his playing career.
Godwin finished the 2022 season with a respectable 1,019 receiving yards and three touchdowns. But based on his air yards, Godwin should never have approached 1,000 yards on the season. In fact, Godwin had to rely on some Deebo Samuel-like production after the catch to get there this year.
Of Godwin’s 1,019 receiving yards this season, a full 497 of those came after the catch (49%). His 407 yards after the catch ranked fourth in the NFL despite only barely finishing in the top 50 for overall air yards. As you might imagine, Godwin has a tiny aDOT of 5.65 yards this season, as it seems the Buccaneers were trying to engineer ways for him to get the ball in space and do some good after the catch.
If Tom Brady is gone next year, or some other replacement-level guy is brought in to pursue him, Godwin may have trouble adjusting to a quarterback who has not traditionally excelled with the Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola, or Chris Godwin types.
Juju Smith-Schuster
Juju Smith-Schuster’s first season in Kansas City was mostly a success, especially considering how widely distributed the receiver targets were in Kansas City this season.
Juju Smith-Schuster’s first season w/ #Chiefs:
78 catches
933 receiving yards
3 touchdowns pic.twitter.com/gZrmbyKPuN— Aaron Ladd (@aaronladd0) January 8, 2023
But Smith-Schuster had 190 more receiving yards (933) than he did air yards (742). He managed to secure 933 receiving yards (and a $1 million incentive) by ranking 10th in the league in total yards after the catch (454) despite only a 16% target share and 101 targets (31st overall). Only Amon-Ra St. Brown (the new king of YAC) and Chris Godwin had more receiving yards than air yards this year, and they both did it on more targets (St. Brown finished with 137 targets despite missing two games).
We learned a harsh truth post-Tyreek Hill in Kansas City. And that is Patrick Mahomes favors Travis Kelce and Jerick McKinnon more than any of the other receivers. Yards and targets were loosely distributed among the wide receiver room throughout the season, and Smith-Schuster needed an outlier year of yards after the catch to produce as he did.
If he is back next season (a really big if), he is likely to take a step back in that department and would need a leap forward in targets or aDOT to match this year’s production.
