Projected Air Yards

The model was asked to predict team air yards for the upcoming slate. It was trained on everything that happened before kickoff, including offensive and defensive tendencies, career usage rates and cumulative rolling stats. Projections reflect each player's share of his team's target competition, multiplied by a predicted team total -- not an independent guess for each player. Rookie projections should be taken with a grain of salt to begin the season; they will sharpen as real games accumulate and usage patterns emerge.

Running Hot & Cold

The model was asked to project air yards on a play-by-play basis in games that have already occurred. It was trained on everything that happened pre-snap but wasn't allowed to see anything that happened post-snap. Since we now know what happened on every play, we can compare the model's projections against the actual results.

Air Yards: Projected vs. Actual

Given a player's overall usage, how often did they project to be targeted downfield? Did they earn more air yards than the model projected (meaning they ran hot), or fewer than projected (they ran cold).

Abbreviations
  • GP — total games played, including regular and post-season games (when applicable).
  • Tgt — targets, the number of times a player was thrown to. For the QB tab, this is the team's total real passing targets, not one specific quarterback's -- see the note below.
  • Air Yards — how far the ball traveled past the line of scrimmage toward the intended receiver, regardless of whether or not it was caught.
  • Actual / Projected Air Yards — the total downfield opportunities a player earned / what the model projected after analyzing play-calling and usage trends.
  • +/- — Actual air yards minus projected air yards. A positive number means they gained more air yards than the model projected -- they ran hot; a negative outcome means they gained fewer -- or ran cold.
  • +/- Per Tgt — how hot or cold the player ran on a per-target basis
Air Yards
Player Team GP Tgt Actual Projected +/- +/- per Tgt

Conversion: Bullseye Rate 🎯 vs. Prayer Yards 🙏

How often did the quarterback and receiver connect? Bullseye rate is the receiver equivalent of completion rate, measuring how often they turned the quarterback's air yards into actual, factual receiving yards. Prayer yards measure the opposite -- the incompletions. You can't feed your family with prayer yards.

Abbreviations
  • GP — total games played, including regular and post-season games (when applicable).
  • Tgt — targets, the number of times a player was thrown to. For the QB tab, this is the team's total real passing targets, not one specific quarterback's -- see the note below.
  • Air Yards — how far the ball traveled past the line of scrimmage toward the intended receiver, regardless of whether or not it was caught.
  • Complete AY / Incomplete AY — dividing a player's total air yards by the completions and incompletions.
  • Bullseye Rate 🎯 — share of a receiver's air yards that were caught. Higher rate = converting more of their opportunities into real production.
  • Prayer Yards 🙏 — share of a receiver's air yards that fell incomplete. Can't feed your family with prayer yards.
Conversion
Player Team GP Tgt Complete AY Incomplete AY Bullseye% 🎯 Prayer% 🙏

Attribution

Bandit Football uses NFL data accessed through the nflverse ecosystem of open-source packages.

Play-by-play data and EPA: Carl S, Baldwin B (2026). nflfastR: Functions to Efficiently Access NFL Play by Play Data. R package version 5.2.0.9014, https://nflfastr.com/.

Data access (rosters, Next Gen Stats, Pro Football Reference stats, participation): Ho T, Carl S (2026). nflreadr: Download 'nflverse' Data. R package version 1.5.1.9000, https://nflreadr.nflverse.com.

Next Gen Stats: player tracking data provided by NFL Next Gen Stats, accessed via nflverse.

Advanced stats and snap counts: provided by Pro Football Reference (pro-football-reference.com), accessed via nflverse.

Participation data: participation data from 2023 onward is provided by FTN Data, accessed via nflverse, released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license — attribution to FTN Data via nflverse. Participation data prior to 2023 is provided by NFL Next Gen Stats, accessed via nflverse.

Game and schedule context (weather, surface, betting lines): schedule data maintained by Lee Sharpe, accessed via nflverse.

Roster and player information: nflverse roster data.