NFL Air Yards Analysis & Fantasy Football Takeaways (2024)

Analyzing 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 Wednesday during the regular season for our breakdown of the week that was in fantasy football air yards.

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Week 3 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 freely accessible everywhere, and you can find the site or format that works best for you.

This list represents the top 50 players from most to fewest air yards. From Rome Odunze‘s 245 air yards down to Tyler Conklin‘s 59. 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 of these pieces of data together with a heat map provides opportunities for a quick eye test from this chart and gives us a significant number of takeaways from Week 3. In this weekly piece, we will dig into the four biggest things that jump out to me from this dataset, which might help with fantasy start sit decisions, fantasy football trade values and more.

Top Takeaways From Week 3 Air Yards Data

Rome Was Built in a Day

Anyone looking for a breakout game from Rome Odunze or Caleb Williams found it on Sunday when the Bears took on the Indianapolis Colts and their lackluster pass defense. Caleb Williams threw for 363 yards and his first two touchdowns of his career. In the process, he allocated a whopping 245 air yards to Rome Odunze, which allowed him to pile up six catches for 112 yards and a score. It was perhaps the breakthrough that this dynamic rookie duo needed to take the next step, and Odunze looked perfectly healthy after some injury scares the last two weeks.

Odunze's 245 air yards are 37 more than Week 2's leader, Malik Nabers, and are the most by any individual player in the league this year. Williams was targeting Odunze all over the field, including 11 total targets and two in the red zone. Odunze only finished with 24 yards after the catch, but that's because his average depth of target (aDOT) was an extremely high 21.4 yards. To see this kind of improvement from Williams is encouraging since he had not completed a pass over 14 yards heading into Week 3. Only teammate DJ Moore ran more routes in the entire NFL last week, so if this all of a sudden can become an ascending passing attack with that kind of volume, it's going to be Rome Odunze to the moon for the rest of the fantasy season.

Scary Terry Deep Shots

Speaking of players with high aDOTs in Week 3, you weren't alone if it looked to you like Terry McLaurin was getting a lot of deep shots his way on Monday Night Football. His aDOT was 20.5 yards, which is how you end up with 148 air yards (fourth-most on the week) on just six targets. That type of vertical attack has not been possible for McLaurin in the first five years of his career and 13.1 yards is the highest aDOT he has seen in a season since 2020. Last season that number sat at 11.5 yards, but it's already up to 14.4 in 2024, mostly aided by the performance on Monday.

Playing with quarterbacks like Sam Howell, Taylor Heinicke and Ryan Fitzpatrick, none of whom could connect on the deep balls, is a stark contrast to someone like Jayden Daniels. The Commanders gave Daniels a clean pocket versus the Bengals and that's when he can drop bombs in receivers' laps. He ranks fifth in the NFL with a 79.2% completion percentage when he has a clean pocket, and McLaurin is starting to look like the clear beneficiary. Through three weeks, McLaurin has 18 targets. No other running back or wide receiver has more than nine.

Rashee Rice: YAC Monster

You have to scroll down to 48th on this list to find Rashee Rice and his 60 total air yards against the Atlanta Falcons. However, Rice was sixth in total receiving yards (110) because he has become one of the NFL's best receivers at catching balls and getting yards after the catch. Rice leads all receivers in yards after the catch this season with 192 — 55 more than Chris Godwin in second.

On this game chart from Sunday that NFL Next Gen Stats provides, you can see the strategy of how the Chiefs want to use Rice under normal circumstances. It is a ton of underneath routes, crossing routes, hits at the line of scrimmage and plays on the run that allows Rice to use his uber-athleticism to make plays behind sublime blocking. Rice is what we might refer to as an air yards model-breaker. He will likely never be near the top of the charts in air yards week to week, but like Cooper Kupp in 2021, he will likely finish the season among the leaders in receiving yards because the Chiefs have found the ideal way to use his skills.

Try and Acquire Rashid Shaheed

After two weeks where Rashid Shaheed totaled 169 receiving yards and two touchdowns, fantasy managers thought they were safe to start him in their Week 3 lineups. Zero fantasy points later, we are scratching our heads wondering what went wrong. The answer, it turns out, wasn't usage and opportunity. Shaheed was 13th in air yards among all players last week, demanding 58% of the Saints' air yards share. He also had a 21% target share. Derek Carr tried to find Shaheed five times against the weak Philadelphia Eagles pass defense, but none of them were able to connect.

This looks like a classic case of bad luck (regressing from the amazing luck Carr had in Weeks 1 and 2), and represents a buying opportunity for Shaheed. If any fantasy managers are spooked by the goose egg in their lineup, jump on Shaheed and this new-look Saints offense. They are prioritizing bigger plays through the air and Shaheed continues to be a part of that process. There may be some games like this mixed in, but when he hits, Shaheed usually hits big. Through three weeks, Shaheed is 13th among all pass-catchers with 270 air yards.