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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's where I got....
Here'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't flawless analytics, it was the first step to make sure I wasn't diving into something not worth my time. My quick response was that the ADOT of the top 12 WR'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'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'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'm hoping someone can tell me what I'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're a big believer in Air Yards/ADOT in relation to Wide Receiver Production. I'd love to get some insight on where the GAP is between my research and your beliefs on Air Yards.
