Week 14, 2023. Tyreek Hill catches a slant from Tua Tagovailoa at the line of scrimmage, breaks two tackles, and outruns the entire defensive backfield for a 78-yard touchdown. The broadcast spends the next three minutes replaying the catch and run. The receiver gets credited with 78 receiving yards, the quarterback gets credited with a 78-yard passing touchdown, and the box score the next morning tells a story that, to anyone who watched the play, feels both true and incomplete. The 78 yards belong to Hill, mostly. The ball traveled three yards in the air. The rest was a man with elite speed and elite vision making the kind of play that only happens when the route, the protection, the throw, and the runner’s reading of the defensive pursuit all align. Conventional NFL statistics, designed in the 1930s and grafted onto modern football, cannot separate any of those things. Air yards and yards after catch — the two metrics that decompose receiving output into its component parts — can.
Air yards and yards after catch (YAC) are, in 2026, the most underused pair of stats in public NFL coverage. The metrics have existed in proprietary form since at least the early 2010s, became broadly available through the NFL’s player-tracking system and public databases by 2017, and now sit on the per-game stat pages of every major football website. Most readers scroll past them. Most writers cite them only in passing, usually to make a single observation about a player’s “downfield” production. What the stats actually do, used together, is decompose the receiving game into the throw and the runner — into the quarterback’s contribution and the receiver’s contribution — in a way that nothing else in the public NFL toolkit accomplishes. Every modern wide receiver evaluation, in my opinion, should start with this decomposition. Most of them don’t.
I have been writing about football analytics since 2018, mostly through the lens of evaluating receivers and quarterbacks in their joint production, and the framework I find myself most often defending in conversations with non-analytics readers is the one this article is about. Air yards and yards after catch — what they measure, how to read them together, where the public coverage gets them wrong, and how to use them to evaluate receivers the way scouts and analytics departments have been evaluating them since the early 2010s, is the subject of this article.
The origin: where air yards and YAC came from
The conceptual distinction between air yards and yards after catch dates to the early 2000s, when NFL teams began charting their own passing offenses to identify where production was being generated. The proprietary versions tracked the distance the ball traveled in the air from the line of scrimmage to the point of the catch (air yards) and the distance the receiver ran after the catch (YAC). The two numbers, summed, equal the play’s total yardage.
The first widely-available public version emerged through Pro Football Focus in the early 2010s, when PFF began charting every NFL passing play with air-yard and YAC components. The data was, at the time, behind a subscription paywall. NFL Next Gen Stats, launched in 2017 with the optical tracking system, began publishing air-yard distance and other player-tracking-derived metrics for free in the NFL.com Stats portal. By 2019, air yards and YAC were standard fields in any public NFL stat database.
The analytical community pushed the conceptual frame further. Josh Hermsmeyer at FiveThirtyEight and, later, his own consulting work, published influential pieces in the late 2010s arguing that air yards predict future production more reliably than catches or receiving yards alone. Hermsmeyer’s average depth of target (aDOT) and air yards share metrics became staples of fantasy football analysis and gradually leaked into mainstream NFL coverage.
By 2022, the air-yards/YAC framework was the dominant analytical structure for evaluating wide receivers in serious public coverage. PFF, ESPN, The Athletic, and the fantasy football community all integrated the metrics into player evaluations. The proprietary club-level versions remained more sophisticated (with route-specific air-yard expectations, defensive-coverage adjustments, and pre-snap personnel grouping), but the public versions were close enough for most editorial work.
How air yards and YAC work: in plain language
Every NFL passing play, when it ends in a completion, has two measurable yardage components. Air yards is the distance the ball traveled, in the air, from the line of scrimmage to the point at which the receiver caught it. A 12-yard out route caught at the sideline near the first-down marker has 12 air yards. A screen pass caught two yards behind the line of scrimmage has negative air yards (typically -1 or -2). A bomb caught 40 yards downfield has 40 air yards.
Yards after catch is the distance the receiver ran with the ball after making the catch. A 12-yard out route caught and tackled immediately has 0 YAC. The same out route caught and broken for a long gainer has whatever yardage the receiver ran after the catch — possibly the rest of the field for a touchdown.
The two metrics, summed, equal the play’s total yardage. A 78-yard completion with 3 air yards and 75 YAC tells a fundamentally different story than a 78-yard completion with 50 air yards and 28 YAC. The first is a screen or short underneath route with elite runner-after-catch impact. The second is a downfield throw with the receiver running through a coverage breakdown.
At the aggregated level, the metrics produce two derivative numbers worth understanding. Average depth of target (aDOT) is the average air-yards distance on a receiver’s targets, regardless of whether they catch the pass. A receiver with an aDOT of 14 is being targeted, on average, 14 yards downfield. A receiver with an aDOT of 5 is being targeted at or near the line of scrimmage. Air yards share is the percentage of a team’s total air yards attributed to a specific receiver — a measure of how much of the downfield passing offense flows through them.
The conceptual insight is that receiving yards are a joint product of the throw and the runner, and treating them as a single number obscures who is doing the work. A receiver with elite YAC numbers is creating yards after the catch through elusiveness, strength, and vision. A receiver with elite aDOT and high catch rates is winning his routes downfield. Both are valuable. They are not the same player profile.
The critical component: separating receivers from the system
The single most important application of the air-yards/YAC framework is in separating a receiver’s contribution from the offense’s. A receiver in a quick-game offense (think Miami Dolphins under Mike McDaniel) will have a low aDOT and high YAC, because the system is designed to get the ball out fast and let the receiver run with it. The same receiver in a vertical-passing offense (think the late-2010s Saints under Sean Payton) would have a high aDOT and lower YAC, because the system is designed to throw the ball downfield and let the receiver win his coverage.
The receiver’s actual skill is partially obscured by the system. A receiver who posts 1,200 receiving yards in a quick-game offense and a receiver who posts 1,200 receiving yards in a vertical offense are operating in different statistical environments. Their underlying skill profiles can be very different — one is essentially a YAC specialist, the other is a downfield route-runner — and reducing both to “1,200-yard receiver” loses critical information.
The cleanest evaluation, in my opinion, combines a receiver’s aDOT, YAC per reception, catch rate, and yards per route run (a separate but related metric). The composite produces a receiver-skill profile that is much more transferable to new offensive systems than the raw receiving yardage. The teams that scout this way — and most do, by 2026 — make different free-agency decisions than teams that look at the box score alone.
Air yards/YAC vs the alternatives: a comparison
The constellation of public WR metrics, side by side:
| Metric | What it measures | What it captures well | What it misses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Receiving yards | Total yards on completions | Counting-stat total | Air yards vs YAC composition entirely |
| aDOT (avg depth of target) | Avg air yards per target | Receiver role and offense type | Catch rate, separation, route quality |
| YAC per reception | Avg yards after catch per completion | Open-field elusiveness | Volume context, defensive scheme |
| Catch rate | %% of targets caught | Reliability, contested-catch ability | Heavily inflated by short-target receivers |
| Yards per route run | Yards generated per route run (not just targeted) | Efficiency on all routes | Requires route-by-route charting |
| PFF receiving grade | Subjective film-graded performance | Position-level context | Proprietary, not reproducible from raw data |
The fullest evaluation uses three or four of these in parallel. Receiving yards alone is misleading. aDOT alone says nothing about catch rate. YAC alone tells you about the runner but not the route. The composite produces a receiver-skill profile that survives changes in offensive system.
What the data needs: inputs
Air yards and YAC, in their public form, require play-by-play data with target-location coordinates for every NFL passing play. The data comes from two main sources: Next Gen Stats (the optical-tracking-derived version, available free through NFL.com Stats) and PFF charting (the manual frame-by-frame version, available through subscription).
The two sources occasionally disagree on edge cases. A pass caught at the boundary between a long completion and a YAC scramble can be classified differently by the two systems. For most aggregated statistics, the two sources produce nearly identical season-long numbers. For individual-play breakdowns, the source matters.
For writers who want to do their own air-yards work, the nflfastR package includes air-yards data as a standard field for completed passes since 2006. The earlier coverage is patchy. The full picture from 2017 forward, courtesy of Next Gen Stats data integration, is comprehensive.
Building the analysis: a working framework
The practical workflow for evaluating a wide receiver using the framework:
- Start with the receiving stat line: receptions, targets, yards, touchdowns, catch rate. The basics.
- Pull the receiver’s aDOT. A receiver targeted at 7 yards downfield is in a different role than one targeted at 14 yards.
- Calculate YAC per reception (or pull it directly from the database). Compare to the receiver’s prior years and to position-mates with similar aDOT.
- Look at yards per route run if PFF data is available. The metric controls for route volume in a way that target-based metrics do not.
- Place the receiver in context of his offense. The same yards per route run means more in a low-aDOT scheme (more YAC opportunity built in) than in a high-aDOT scheme (more vertical winning required).
- Cross-reference with separation data. Next Gen Stats publishes target separation; a receiver getting open with three or more yards of separation on his targets is winning his routes, regardless of where his targets are going.
Where this gets weird: common mistakes
The pitfalls in air-yards/YAC writing.
Treating aDOT as a skill metric. aDOT is a role metric. A receiver with a low aDOT isn’t necessarily worse than one with a high aDOT; he’s in a different position in the offense. Comparing receivers across aDOT profiles requires normalizing for role.
Crediting the receiver for the throw. Air yards are partly the quarterback’s contribution (the throw quality) and partly the receiver’s (the route, the catch). Public coverage often credits the receiver for “downfield production” when much of the variance comes from the quarterback’s accuracy and the play-caller’s design. The careful piece distinguishes.
Inflated catch rates on short-target receivers. A receiver targeted at 4 yards downfield will, naturally, have a higher catch rate than one targeted at 14. Comparing raw catch rates across aDOT profiles is misleading. The comparison should be done against position-mates with similar role.
The “garbage time” YAC inflation. A receiver who racks up yards on screens and underneath routes when his team is trailing by three scores generates YAC that, in competitive game-state, would not have existed. Filtering for game-state when comparing receivers across roles improves the analysis.
Single-season variance. Air yards and YAC stabilize at different rates. Air yards profile is largely role-driven and stabilizes within four to six games. YAC per reception is much noisier and can vary substantially year-over-year for the same receiver. The careful evaluation uses two or three seasons of data rather than a single season.
When air yards/YAC shine: use cases
The applications where the framework has earned its keep:
Receiver scouting for the draft and free agency. A team evaluating a free-agent receiver wants to know how his production will translate to a new offense. The receiver-skill profile from the air-yards/YAC framework is much more transferable than raw receiving yardage. A team that values YAC ability will sign different receivers than a team that values downfield route-winning.
Identifying overrated and underrated receivers. A receiver who posts elite receiving yards in a screen-heavy offense and underwhelming yards per route run is, in expectation, less likely to repeat his production in a new system. A receiver with poor counting stats but elite separation and aDOT-adjusted catch rates is, in expectation, an undervalued asset. The fantasy football community has built much of its long-running analytical edge on these distinctions.
Quarterback evaluation. A QB’s contribution to receiving yards is partly captured by air yards (his throws push the ball downfield) and partly captured by the YAC his throws create (well-led throws into open space generate more YAC than under-thrown ones). The decomposition lets analysts evaluate quarterbacks on the quality of their downfield throws independent of the receivers’ YAC ability.
Offense-vs-offense comparison. Team-level air-yards profile (average team aDOT, percentage of receiving yards from YAC) tells you about the offensive identity in a way the play-type breakdown does not. The 2022 Dolphins’ offense and the 2018 Saints’ offense were very different things despite both being explosive passing attacks. The air-yards composition makes the distinction visible.
A working example: Justin Jefferson’s 2022 season
Justin Jefferson’s 2022 NFL season — 128 receptions, 1,809 yards, eight touchdowns, Offensive Player of the Year — is one of the cleanest air-yards/YAC case studies of the modern era. Jefferson’s aDOT was a high 13.7 yards, well above league average for wide receivers. His catch rate of 67% was strong given that aDOT (deeper targets are inherently lower-catch-rate). His yards per route run was 3.27, the highest among NFL wide receivers that season. His YAC per reception was a modest 4.4 yards, which is interesting context: most of Jefferson’s production was downfield route-winning, not open-field running after the catch.
The composite profile was: Jefferson was an elite downfield route-runner who could win his routes at all levels of the field, catching difficult balls at high rates, while not being primarily a YAC creator. The Vikings’ offensive scheme was tailored to this — Kirk Cousins threw the ball downfield to Jefferson on a high volume of high-aDOT targets. The 1,809 yards were earned with a roughly 75/25 split between air yards and YAC, very different from the 50/50 split a typical 1,400-yard NFL receiver might post.
What that profile predicted was that Jefferson’s value would be highly transferable to other offensive systems, because his core skill — winning downfield routes against tight coverage — does not depend on system-specific YAC opportunities. The 2023 season, even with a quarterback change and an injury-shortened campaign, supported the prediction: Jefferson maintained elite per-target efficiency despite the team’s offensive disruption. The air-yards profile had told the story that the receiving yards alone could not.
The limits: what air yards/YAC cannot tell you
The honest version of this writing names the limits.
Air yards and YAC cannot capture the route-running quality that produces separation. A receiver with elite aDOT and high catch rates may have great hands; he may also be running brilliant routes that create the separation that makes the catch easy. The metric tells you the outcome of the catch, not the quality of the route that preceded it. Combining with separation data and route-running grades fills part of the gap.
Air yards and YAC cannot fully credit the quarterback. A great throw into a tight window that the receiver catches in stride and runs for 40 yards is credited as 15 air yards and 25 YAC. The quarterback’s contribution is partially captured in the air yards but not the throw quality. CPOE (completion percentage over expected) is the public metric closest to filling this gap.
Air yards and YAC cannot model run-game blocking. A wide receiver who is asked to block on screen plays is, by his blocking quality, generating opportunity for YAC by his teammates. The metric records what happens after the catch, not what the receiver does before the catch is made by someone else.
Air yards and YAC cannot replace film evaluation for the harder receiver-evaluation questions — body control on contested catches, ability to read coverage, willingness to block on running plays. The metrics are an analytical foundation. The film is the layer that the analytics community combines with the numbers to produce serious evaluations.
One additional limit: the public-facing tracking data, while excellent for aggregate analysis, is not as granular as the proprietary club-level data. Specific defender coverage on each target, the exact separation at the moment of the throw versus the catch, and pre-snap motion effects are all measured more precisely inside clubs than in the public databases. The gap is real but narrow enough that careful public-facing analysis remains useful.
Frequently asked questions
What is a “good” aDOT for an NFL wide receiver?
League average aDOT for primary wide receivers is roughly 10-11 yards. A deep-threat receiver (Mike Williams in his peak years, the late-career DeSean Jackson) posts aDOT of 14+. A slot/quick-game specialist (Cooper Kupp in some seasons, Christian Kirk in others) posts aDOT of 7-9. The “right” aDOT depends entirely on role. Comparing across roles is uninformative.
How do YAC per reception numbers compare across positions?
Wide receivers typically generate 4-6 YAC per reception. Tight ends average around 4-5. Running backs receiving out of the backfield average 7-9 YAC per reception, because their targets are concentrated at the line of scrimmage with significant open-field opportunity. Comparing a running back’s YAC to a wide receiver’s is, again, a category mistake — different positions, different opportunity structures.
Does air yards predict future production?
Yes, more reliably than receiving yards do. Air-yards share — the percentage of a team’s air yards attributed to a specific receiver — has been shown to predict next-season receiving yards more reliably than the prior season’s yards alone. The intuition is that air-yards share captures the receiver’s role and target volume, which tend to persist year-over-year more than the variance-laden catch rate and YAC totals.
Where can I see this data?
NFL Next Gen Stats publishes free air-yards data at nflnextgenstats.nfl.com. nflfastR (the R package) provides the same data in clean form for analysis. Pro Football Focus offers more granular versions through subscription, including route-by-route YAC and separation. The fantasy football community at Rotoworld, FantasyPros, and 4for4 has built substantial public-facing analysis on this framework.
Sources and further reading
- NFL Next Gen Stats — the league’s official source for tracking-data-derived metrics including air yards and target separation.
- nflfastR documentation — the open-source R package that includes air-yards and YAC as standard fields for analysis.
- Pro Football Focus — the leading commercial provider for receiver charting, with route-by-route detail beyond the public versions.
- Josh Hermsmeyer’s writing — the analyst most responsible for bringing air-yards-based analysis into the mainstream public conversation.
- 4for4 Fantasy Football — the fantasy football community’s longstanding integration of air-yards analytics into player evaluation.
The Hill 78-yarder that opened this article — three air yards, 75 YAC, a play that the box score scored as 78 receiving yards — is exactly the kind of play the framework was built to decompose. Tagovailoa got credit for the touchdown. Hill got credit for the catch. The film and the air-yards/YAC ledger combine to credit the play to its actual authors: a receiver with elite open-field elusiveness, a quarterback with the touch to deliver a catchable short throw, and an offensive system built around exactly that combination. For the broader frame on how to read modern NFL production past the counting stats, our guide to EPA is the natural companion piece.
