Air Yards
Identifying the NFL's best and worst connections with NBC Sports's Denny Carter. Tracking every quarterback's complete and incomplete air yards and the players on the receiving end: WRs, TEs and RBs across all 32 teams.
Bandit Football tracks air yards in collaboration with NBC Sports and Rotoworld's Denny Carter, who writes and podcasts about air yards on a weekly basis in his Regression Files column, the Rotoworld Football Show and the NFL on NBC YouTube channel.
Air yards highlight which quarterbacks are willing (or unwilling) to chuck the ball downfield.
As a stat, however, they're somewhat flawed. Air yards track the total distance the ball flew past (or behind) the line of scrimmage — regardless of whether or not the ball was caught, intercepted or fell incomplete.
For that reason, we've decided to split out Completed Air Yards from Incomplete Air Yards: and in so doing, separate the folks who are connecting on their downfield shots from those heaving up unanswered prayers.
Methodology
We designed a model to predict how many air yards a player would earn on a given play using publicly available nflverse data (see the attribution section at the bottom of this page for more intel).
How the model was made, the various inputs considered and its decision-tree framework will be made available on Bandit Football when time allows.
Github Repo
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% 🙏 |
The QB tab shows each quarterback by name, counted throw by throw, so a game with two passers splits correctly between them. Projected air yards are the same model, added up over his throws.
Team Air Yards Leaderboard
Total air yards thrown by each team's offense, and allowed by each team's defense, split into complete and incomplete. Regular season, Weeks 1-18 only, so every team is compared on equal footing.
Abbreviations
- Total — total air yards, how far the ball traveled past the line of scrimmage on every target, whether caught or not.
- Complete — air yards on targets that were caught.
- Incomplete — air yards on targets that fell incomplete (or were intercepted).
- Click any column header to sort by it. Rank always reflects whatever column is currently sorted -- click a defense column and Rank 1 becomes the team allowing the least, since fewer air yards allowed is the better outcome on defense.
| Air Yards | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team Offense | Team Defense | ||||||||||
| RK | Team | GP | Total | Avg. | Complete | Incomplete | Total | Avg. | Complete | Incomplete | |
Player Card
Pick a player for a look at his last four games.
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.
FTN charting data (QB alignment, backfield, motion, play action, screens, RPOs, no-huddle, catchable and contested balls, drops): provided by FTN Data, accessed via nflverse, and released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Game and schedule context (weather, surface, betting lines): schedule data maintained by Lee Sharpe, accessed via nflverse.
Roster and player information: nflverse roster data.
College football: data from the SportsDataverse data repository, released under CC BY 4.0. It is the data behind cfbfastR: Gilani S, Easwaran A, Lee J, Hess E (2026). cfbfastR: Access College Football Play by Play Data. https://cfbfastR.sportsdataverse.org/, Underlying game, box score and roster data from ESPN; logo links point to images hosted by ESPN.