NFL DFS Air Yards Report: Reviewing Week 7
Air Yards are a statistic we use in NFL DFS to identify the quality of a player’s opportunity. When we can find players who have greater opportunity than their recent production shows, we can often benefit in our lineup choices on DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo. In this article, we’ll open the RotoGrinders Usage App from JoshADHD and discover a few key air yards trends from recent weeks. We’ll look for players who have a strong share of their team opportunity, but production that lags behind. We should be able to make better projections and find high upside at lower than expected projected ownership if we identify these players properly.
Today’s NFL DFS Air Yards Report
Tyler Lockett
NFL Team: Seattle Seahawks
Position: WR
Share of Team Air Yards: 53.9% (29.9% average)
Air Yards: 233
Air Conversion (RACR): 0.86
To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Tyler Lockett led the league with a whopping 233 air yards in Week 7. I already highlighted Lockett’s massive fantasy performance in this week’s DFS Stars Report but in case you missed it, Lockett turned in a ridiculous 20 targets into 15 receptions, 200 yards, and 3 touchdowns. Russell Wilson force-feeding Lockett seemed to be a part of Seattle’s game plan as D.K. Metcalf kept Arizona’s top cornerback Patrick Peterson occupied. While Lockett has shown us twice already this season that he’s good for a spiked week here and there, don’t get comfortable with him leading the team in air yards as Metcalf has been the top dog in that category for the majority of the season. It’s difficult to predict who will be Seattle’s top-scoring receiver on a weekly basis but both Lockett and Metcalf project well this week despite a middling matchup against the San Francisco 49ers.
Darnell Mooney
NFL Team: Chicago Bears
Position: WR
Share of Team Air Yards: 38.2%
Air Yards: 155
Air Conversion (RACR): 0.26
“He could have had a big game.” If I had a penny for every time I heard someone say that about Darnell Mooney after Week 7’s game against the Rams, well, I’d have close to 10-cents. What’s important, however, is that the people saying that weren’t wrong. Mooney was third in the league last week with 155 air yards and Nick Foles missed him for a big gain on multiple occasions. With Allen Robinson still in the concussion protocol, Chicago may not have any other option than to go back to Mooney in Week 8 against the Saints and if Robinson is in fact out, Mooney makes for an intriguing value option with some solid upside.
A.J. Green
NFL Team: Cincinnati Bengals
Position: WR
Share of Team Air Yards: 37.4%
Air Yards: 131
Air Conversion (RACR): 0.63
I’ll admit it, I was one of the people to write A.J. Green up as washed after the first few weeks of the season, but the veteran wide receiver has looked better of late. Green has totaled 24 targets and 178-yards over the last two weeks, which is 59 more yards than he racked up over the first five weeks of the season. Green has some stiff target competition in Cincinnati with Tyler Boyd ($6,600) and Tee Higgins ($5,600) also looking to get fed but Green’s $4,500 price tag on DraftKings is a significant discount from the other two. The Bengals passing attack is in a favorable matchup against the Titans in Week 8 and while all three receivers are unlikely to put up big games in the same week, I still want to make sure I have some exposure to each one in tournaments.