Week 8 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 7 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 7 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. 

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Week 7 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 65 wide receivers from most to least air yards. From Stefon Diggs’ 219 air yards all the way down to  Ray-Ray McCloud’s 34. 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 6. We will dig into the five biggest things that jump out to me from this dataset. 

Top 5 Takeaways From Week 7 Air Yards Data

Room at the Hyatt

There’s no telling what might happen when Daniel Jones returns from a neck injury, but Tyrod Taylor is starting to target Jalin Hyatt WAY down field every game. You don’t get 168 air yards on just five targets without some very long attempts downfield. In fact, you can see from the graph above that no one else with more than 80 air yards had fewer than six targets. Looking at players with at least five targets, Hyatt’s 33.6 average depth of target (aDOT) was 10 yards more than the next closest player (Jameson Williams, 23.8).

The trade-off, of course, is that those throws are wildly volatile and have a much lower rate of success. But all you need is just a couple of them to hit each week and you can get Hyatt’s line of two catches for 75 yards. He didn’t find the end zone, but the Giants are trying to find a way to turn him into the home run play, Marquez Valdes-Scantling type player. Enjoy the connection with Tyrod Taylor while you can, he ranks ninth among all quarterbacks in deep ball completion percentage this year (45.5%). Daniel Jones? He’s down at 31st with 18.2%.

Investing in Jameson

Speaking of Jameson Williams, that was a horrific game for the Lions all around on Sunday, but the opportunity in that contest (and some things that have happened this week) are pointing towards big things coming for the second-year wide receiver. Jared Goff just did not have his A-game on Sunday. If it wasn’t Jahmyr Gibbs, the Baltimore Ravens just found a way to pressure Goff into making bad throws to everyone else. That’s how Williams can end up with 143 air yards and zero receiving yards. The 143 air yards is very encouraging and I see the zero catches as mostly noise considering the poor performance overall. 

We also can’t dismiss the news that Marvin Jones is stepping away from football to deal with some personal issues. In 2022 and also somewhat in 2023, Marvin Jones was acting as the deep threat in this offense when Williams was injured or suspended. With that target competition removed and Williams already doubling up Josh Reynolds in targets, the pecking order in the Lions’ offense is starting to come into clarity. Before long, this will be an offense that features a two-headed running back monster, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam LaPorta in the short area, and Jameson Williams getting all the downfield work. 

Panic Time for Ridley?

Things have not been good for Calvin Ridley since Week 1 of the 2023 NFL season. He opened his Jaguars’ career with eight catches for 101 yards and a touchdown. But in Weeks 2-7, he is WR51 in half-PPR formats, just fractions of a point ahead of Nelson Agholor and behind players like Tank Dell (who has played in two fewer games). Now we see that Ridley saw just four targets in Week 7 and caught only one for five yards. It looks like there were some long pass attempts in the the four targets, which is promising, but promises don’t show up in our fantasy box scores. 

However, Ridley still far and away leads this team in air yards (617 to Christian Kirk’s 448) and has a strong 12.8 aDOT. Those can all be harbingers of big things to come for Ridley, but it may just be the offensive game plan that diminishes Ridley’s value the most. Over the last three weeks, Jacksonville has the fourth-highest rushing play percentage in the NFL (47.5%). Add in the fact that Jacksonville ranks just 22nd in passing yards per completion (9.5 yards) and Travis Etienne and Christian Kirk still look like the players to roster over Ridley. 

Hollywood Misses

Over the last four weeks, Marquise Brown ranks seventh among all wide receivers in overall targets (with 38). Only a list of potential fantasy MVPs (Nacua, Hill, Brown, Diggs, St. Brown) are above him. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Brown ranks just 22nd in catches with 18. That’s fewer than Wan’Dale Robinson, Zay Flowers, and Josh Downs in that span. Josh Dobbs has devolved from interesting fantasy option to a dud again and the Cardinals’ receiver likely can’t wait to get Kyler Murray back on the field again. 

In that same span of the last four games, Brown ranks third at the position in total air yards (541). There is no denying that the opportunity is there, but he needs someone with more accuracy and precision getting him the ball. Zach Ertz going down with injury doesn’t help and the running game being atrocious without James Conner lets defenses double Hollywood Brown more. But if the Cardinals can find a way to scheme Brown open more, there will be some fantasy explosion games. 

JSN Runway Open

With D.K. Metcalf out in Week 7, we finally got some elite opportunity numbers for star rookie Jaxon Smith-Njigba. He saw a 29% target share and a 31% air yards share despite splitting work with Tyler Lockett and Jake Bobo. At this stage of their careers, JSN likely is more talented than any of those three, and could soon ascend to challenging Tyler Lockett for targets even when Metcalf returns. JSN’s targets, yards, yards per reception, and  fantasy points were the best of his young career this past week, and he more than doubled his fantasy output from any other game. 

Like with Calvin Ridley, however, the thing that might hold JSN down the most is the Seahawks’ commitment to the running game. They passed just 44.8% in Week 7 and are now just 21st on the season with a 57% pass rate. The overall volume might not be exactly what we want from JSN in this first season, but his hyper-efficiency should still lead to some big fantasy days.