Analyzing air yards for fantasy football is a valuable exercise in predicting what certain receivers will do. If a wide receiver saw a huge amount of air yards but fell drastically short in receiving yards and receptions, we can make an assumption that will play to his advantage in future games. Conversely, if a player saw a huge spike in receiving yards but didn’t see the air yards to match, that could mean a huge amount of yards after the catch, which can always vary from week to week.

Looking at a player’s intended usage and not just the surface results is one way to more accurately evaluate players in fantasy football. I hope you’ll join me every Wednesday during the regular season for our analysis of the week that was air yards in fantasy football.

Week 1 Air Yards Analysis & Fantasy Football Takeaways

Below we have a graph showing air meters and receiving data from the 4for4 Air Yards app. Air Meters is a tool that is now freely accessible everywhere and you can find the site or format that works best for you.

This list ranks the top 50 wide receivers in order of most to least air yards, ranging from Amari Cooper’s 170 air yards to Gabe Davis’ 48. Also included on this list are the team’s targets, receptions, average depth of target (aDOT), target share, and air yard share.

By presenting all of these pieces of data together, we get a chance to quickly test this chart and pull out a lot of important points from Week 1. In this weekly piece, we’ll dive into the four biggest things that stand out to me in this data set.

Week 1 Air Yards and Air Yards% Data

Key Insights from Week 1 Air Yards Data

Hanging out with Amari Cooper

The leader in air yards after one week of play isn’t Cooper Kupp or Tyreek Hill or Nico Collins. It’s Amari Cooper with an incredible 170 air yards in his first game. What makes this even more unusual is that Cooper had a truly terrible game for fantasy purposes, throwing just two catches for 16 yards and zero scores. Deshaun Watson threw him nine targets, but they didn’t result in much production. This clearly wasn’t an Amari Cooper problem, as nine targets, 170 air yards and an 18.9 aDOT is usually a recipe for success in fantasy football. But Amari Cooper managers should be concerned about Deshaun Watson going forward.

Watson had the sixth-lowest completion percentage of any quarterback, recorded the most sack yards on the weekend (32), and ranked 31st in adjusted new yards per pass attempt, according to Fantasy Points Data. Of the 169 passing yards he had on Sunday, a full two-thirds of them came as yards after the catch. Those are the strengths of wide receivers, not Deshaun Watson. Given all that, plus the new legal issues that have cropped up this week, I’d be very concerned about including any of the Browns’ pass catchers on this list.

Fill my Kupp with goals

Wow. Twenty-one targets. That’s the most targets a wide receiver has seen since Antonio Brown had 23 in November of 2015. We now know it was a direct result of Puka Nacua leaving the game with an injured knee, but it’s clear that Cooper Kupp will be the primary receiver filling that void while he’s gone. It almost makes Kupp’s high air yards seem like a fluke. This is one time the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Kupp’s air yards ranked fourth among wide receivers because he saw nine more targets than any other player.

His aDOT was 7.3 yards, making him the only wide receiver in the top 25 in air yards with an aDOT lower than nine yards. In his career, Kupp has been a yards after the catch master, and an accumulator of tremendous volume. He may have ups-and-down weeks in terms of air yards, but they don’t affect his performance the way they do other receivers.

Moore throws down please

DJ Moore’s 32 percent target share was among the highest among all wide receivers in Week 1, but that’s little consolation to fantasy managers who saw just five catches for 36 receiving yards in the box score. Frankly, it’s a surprise he got to 36 considering Caleb Williams only threw 92 the entire game. Even with eight targets because Williams couldn’t get the ball downfield, Moore’s 53 air yards ranked 47th at the position.

It certainly wasn’t a great debut for the No. 1 overall pick. While his defense and special teams saved Caleb Williams, the Bears suffered at receiver. On 88 percent of the routes Moore ran, he was clearly in front of Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze. His eight targets were second on the team. These are all encouraging signs, but the team needs to let Williams swing more before we see “Moore” out of the Bears’ best receiver.

Jameson Williams has arrived

Things are certainly starting to look up for Jameson Williams. He was near the top of the wide receivers this weekend in air yards (127), targets (nine), target share (32%) and air yards share (68%), trailing only George Pickens and Calvin Ridley. But perhaps the most encouraging sign was that he didn’t have an astronomical aDOT — it was a manageable 14.1 yards. Williams can do a lot after the catch, and it appears the Lions have finally learned that. He doesn’t have to take every ball 35 yards away.

Detroit seemed to find ways to get him to throw the ball all over the field and not just hit him on deep bombs. A deep bomb got him his touchdown catch, but it’s nice to see Detroit view Williams as an all-around receiver. And not just a home run threat from time to time.