Week 16 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 15 was another wild week in the 2023 air yards season, as you will see below.

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 15 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 15 Air Yards and Air Yards% Data

Below we have air yards and receiving data courtesy of FTN.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 66 wide receivers from most to least air yards. From Terry McLaurin’s 238 all the way down to David Moore’s 20. 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 15. We will dig into the five biggest things that jump out to me from this dataset. 

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Top 5 Takeaways From Week 15 Air Yards Data

Scary Terry

On the season, Terry McLaurin is now a top-13 wide receiver in total air yards with 1,336. The misleading thing about that is he just piled up 18% of his season’s total with 238 in Week 15, and he hasn’t come close to seeing that number in a game this year. In fact, you have to add up his totals from Weeks 11-14 to get the number he saw just in Week 15’s blowout loss. Sunday’s 23.1 Half-PPR points were just the second time McLaurin finished inside the top 20 of wide receivers this season (he was WR15 in Week 8) and follows a game last week where he got exactly zero points.

Is Sam Howell to blame for the bad season? Is Jacoby Brissett the key unlocking McLaurin as he did in Week 15? There is no easy answer to this question, but McLaurin has been quite unhelpful all season and now faces an uncertain quarterback situation going forward. McLaurin is one of only three receivers in the top 20 of air yards to have under 900 receiving yards on the year (Garrett Wilson and Calvin Ridley being the others), and one of the greatest pure pass-catching talents we have is languishing in this lackluster Washington offense. 

The DeAndre Hopkins Paradox

You start to look at some of DeAndre Hopkins’ numbers for the year, especially with Will Levis, and you assume he must be a top-ten wide receiver in fantasy this year. He is third in the last three weeks in target share with 34.7%. His 33 targets are behind just CeeDee Lamb and A.J. Brown. He is first in the NFL with 1,751 air yards, 70 more than A.J. Brown. And he has six touchdowns. Then how in the world is DeAndre Hopkins just WR20 in Half-PPR this year? In fact, he has almost twice as many games under 10 fantasy points (seven) as he has over 14 (three). 

Hopkins is just proof that air yards don’t mean a thing if the quarterback producing those air yards can’t find you in the right spots. After Will Levis burst on the scene with a four-score game and he gutted out the Miami Dolphins game, there is this narrative that Levis is the perfect passer for Hopkins. But he has simply not been good. Since that four-touchdown game, Levis has had four passing touchdowns total in seven games. He has two games over 65% passing and two games under 50%. Hopkins is going to keep getting volume, but he is having to squeak out respectable games by quantity, not quality. 

Let Rice Cook

Filed under the “Who Cares?” department, Rashee Rice got just 31 air yards on Sunday from Patrick Mahomes. Why do we not care? Because every other number that could signal an increase in usage and efficiency (in an offense that desperately needs some of both) was evident. Rice led the team in targets (no one else had more than seven), he caught every ball thrown to him, he had three of the four wide receiver red zone targets, and – most importantly – played more than 90% of snaps for the first time this year. 

Since after the Chiefs’ Week 10 bye, Rice has seen his snap share go up every week, and he is now the clear focal point of the offense, even passing Travis Kelce in many ways. Even with only 16% of the air yards share, fantasy managers can live with that because he has become so good after the catch. It’s been a little Deebo Samuel-ish the last few weeks. In fact, Rice was fourth among all wide receivers in yards after the catch in Week 15 with 60. This is going to become a very common line for Rice for as long as the Chiefs’ season continues. 

Praising Godwin

I do suppose that the people who drafted Chris Godwin are likely cursing him right now because he did absolutely nothing this season to get them into the fantasy playoffs. They’re surely saying, “Now?! You choose the first week of the playoffs to have a good game?!” It wasn’t just a good game. Godwin was WR6 on the week, better than players like Tee Higgins, Deebo Samuel, and Rashee Rice – all of whom had big games. But the truth is, Godwin had only two games all season over 10 Half-PPR points, so this might be the exception rather than a new rule. 

Godwin’s 155 receiving yards were more than his last four games combined, and it’s all due to the fact that he got a healthy share of the air yards (42%). On the season, Godwin is 33rd in air yards among all wide receivers. Pass-catchers like Elijah Moore and George Pickens both have more air yards this year, and they are rarely targeted. There has been some flukiness to his season as well. Godwin is the only player to have more than 100 targets and have fewer than three touchdowns (he has one on the year). It’s been a weird year, but any more air yards games like this in the fantasy playoffs and he will be back in the circle of trust. 

Don’t Make Me Puka

I guess we should have expected that once Cooper Kupp was fully healthy and engaged in the offense, it would be difficult for a day-three rookie pick to overtake him in the receiving pecking order. The tale of Kupp’s fantasy death was greatly exaggerated. That’s not to say that Nacua is getting nothing, as he still does not have a game this season with fewer than eight targets. But Kupp is getting all the high-value looks, and Nacua is getting 23 air yards in a game where Tutu Atwell and Van Jefferson did not play. 

In Nacua’s first six games of the season, he had 637 air yards. In his last six games, he inverted the numbers around and has just 367. He also has scored just twice since Week 5. So, while he is one of the best rookie stories of the season, Nacua has taken a clear back seat to Cooper Kupp, who has back-to-back 21-point performances in Half-PPR leagues.