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Tonight I decided to dive into Air Yards. Over the last 6 hours, I tried to find the value behind Air Yards as a predictor, or how it can lead to fantasy production. I was looking to figure out why Air Yards would be a better source of points than Targets.
Here& #39;s where I got....
Here& #39;s where I got....
As an accountant, I obviously thought of things mathematically first. Air Yards = ADOT*Targets. To separate the two, the only real factor is Average depth of Target. So I started there.
The first thing I did was to take the top 12, and top 36 WRs every season from 2015 to 2019. I compared their ADOT to the ADOT of the top 80 WRs in the same years, and overlaid histograms on one another. They all looked (extremely) similar.
While this isn& #39;t flawless analytics, it was the first step to make sure I wasn& #39;t diving into something not worth my time. My quick response was that the ADOT of the top 12 WR& #39;s of the last 5 years did not separate themselves from the top 80.
Someone then suggested that I could use Market Share Air Yards as a predictor.
I plotted Market Share Air Yards v Fantasy Points (from top 36 WR the last 5 years). As a whole, MS AY is a solid predictor of fantasy points. R^2 = .229
I plotted Market Share Air Yards v Fantasy Points (from top 36 WR the last 5 years). As a whole, MS AY is a solid predictor of fantasy points. R^2 = .229
I also plotted Target Share v Fantasy Points (from top 36 WR the last 5 years)...It& #39;s clearly a stronger predictor of fantasy points than Market Share of Air Yards. R^2 = .49
Last Ditch Effort: I decided to see if it could be a tiebreaker on teams that had 2+ top 36 Wide Receivers over the last 5 years.
There were 44 situations where a team had 2+ top 36 receivers.
Of these situations, there were 9 where the MS AY leader was not the TS leader.
There were 44 situations where a team had 2+ top 36 receivers.
Of these situations, there were 9 where the MS AY leader was not the TS leader.
Of those 9 situations, 7 of the Target Share leaders had a higher amount of fantasy points. Of the 2 situations where the Market Share AY Leader outperformed the Target Share leader, one of them was 2017 Marvin Jones who outscore Golden Tate by less than a point.
At the end of the day...I can& #39;t see how Air Yards has a higher correlation to fantasy points than targets, or can be a better predictor of fantasy points.
To be honest, I& #39;m hoping someone can tell me what I& #39;m missing about the new "Air Yards" analytics. My research just made me disappointed in the statistic as a whole. What am I missing here?
@YardsPerGretch I know you& #39;re a big believer in Air Yards/ADOT in relation to Wide Receiver Production. I& #39;d love to get some insight on where the GAP is between my research and your beliefs on Air Yards.
