Week 3 provides enough of a sample size to evaluate some of my favorite data that shows how involved a player is in the offense. I decided to focus on receivers and receiving stats and I scoured Twitter for some stats you may find interesting.
One of the more useful stats I saw for this week is the first read target share. This stat reads exactly like it sounds: the quarterback stares down the first option and throws the pass intended to that receiver. If you’re receiving over 30% target share, that is considered elite and you’re talking about a handful of guys like Cooper Kupp and Davante Adams. All of the usual suspects are on this list but the surprises are Mark Andrews ranks at #2. Is this finally the year he supplants Travis Kelce as the best tight end in fantasy football and can be grouped in with the elite wide receivers? Secondly, the two options tied at #7 are Jaylen Waddle and Amari Cooper. Waddle leading Tyreek Hill is not something I saw coming into 2022. Amari Cooper may seem more obvious but he was ranked pretty low this year versus maintaining the strong WR1 production he is maintaining so far.
Air yardage is the actual yardage of the ball travels to the receiver before reception on all targets, so not all air yardage is converted to real yardage because not all targets are caught. Obviously the biggest name that jumps off this list is the overall leader Chris Olave who leads the pack by a whopping nearly 150 yards of air yards. Call it the Jameis Winston effect, but even with a healthy Michael Thomas, Olave’s profile as a deep threat is holding strong in the first three weeks of the league. Olave is getting targeted aggressively down the field and although he has not necessarily converted these air yards into real yards at an efficient rate, it is a good predictive stat for how Olave’s yardage should boom as the season goes on. This whole list is surprising given the only first round wide receivers on the list are Cooper Kupp, Stefon Diggs and Davante Adams. Mark Andrews is having an insane year and he’s already shown up on two of these lists. I’m encouraged by McLaurin and Elijah Moore’s air yardage (two players I was high on in the pre-season) but they have had slow starts to the season. I see no reason to panic yet as the analytics are still on their side.
Lastly we look at red zone targets. We don’t play PPR so the only two things that matter are yards and touchdowns. Hopefully if you are reading this you have at least one receiver on one of the lists above, or you can have recurring players like Mark Andrews, AJ Brown or Cooper Kupp and you’re absolutely crushing it. Noah Brown and Pat Freiermuth are interesting names and can help teams out with some longshot touchdown odds as we venture into the bye weeks. Metcalf’s number is staggering here and he pretty much has no competition for red zone targets so far. We need to adjust our perception of Amon-Ra St. Brown: the fact is he is an elite wide receiver, last year was no fluke and he should be considered a top 10 WR for the rest of the season.
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