NFL DFS: Five Advanced Stats You Need to Know This Season
By Dan Palyo
NFL DFS: Air Yards
If you’re not familiar with “air yards” they are pretty much exactly what they sound like. Air yards are measured slightly different for QBs than they are for receivers though. For QBs, air yards represent the total amount of yards a completed pass traveled from where the QB threw the ball to where the receiver caught it. For receivers, completed air yards are measured from the line of scrimmage to the catch point. It’s basically their total receiving yardage minus any YAC (yards after catch).
You can also look at “total air yards” which is going to give you the total number of air yards on both completions and incomplete passes that were intended for that receiver.
Why Do They Matter?
Looking at air yards gives us the ability to locate receivers who are catching longer passes. It’s hard to try and predict YAC because even the shiftiest slot receiver can catch a bunch of 5-yard passes without breaking one. You’ll notice from the list below that the leaders in air yards last year are receivers who are often targeted heavily on intermediate and deep routes. The volume of targets and receptions a receiver gets matters more on a site like Draftkings that is full PPR, but these short passes go for touchdowns a lot less often, too. We want to aggressively target receivers who we know are going to be targeted often by their QB in situations where they have a chance to gain large chunks of yards and therefore accrue a lot of fantasy points.
Top 5 Last Season (Wide Receivers)
- Mike Evans (1256)
- Julio Jones (1227)
- DeAndre Hopkins (1217)
- Adam Thielen (1002)
- Tyreek Hill (957)