What Are Air Yards in the NFL?

Air yards are the distance a pass travels downfield past the line of scrimmage, measured to where the ball arrives at its target, caught or not. They separate a receiver's opportunity from what he did with it: air yards belong to the throw, yards after the catch belong to the player.

How air yards are measured

Air yards are charted per throw. The ball crosses the line of scrimmage, travels through the air, and wherever it arrives relative to that line is the air yard total for the play. A 14 yard throw caught at the sticks is 14 air yards. The same 14 yard throw dropped, broken up, or overthrown is still 14 air yards, because the number describes the attempt, not the result.

That last part is what makes the stat useful. Nearly every receiving number a bettor looks at (yards, catches, touchdowns) is contaminated by whether the ball happened to be caught. Air yards are not. They record where a coaching staff and a quarterback decided to aim the football, which is a decision that repeats.

Pro Football Reference publishes the receiving and passing versions in its advanced tables, sourced from Sportradar game charting and updated by 6pm on the Tuesday after each week. The NFL's own Next Gen Stats tracks the same concept off player tracking data. The definitions line up, so you can use either without translating.

Air yards, receiving yards, and yards after catch

Every receiving yard comes from one of two places. Either the ball flew there, or the receiver ran there after catching it. Pro Football Reference defines yards after catch as receiving yards minus air yards, which makes the split explicit. (One small caveat from their own notes: yards gained or lost on a fumble after the reception are not included in YAC, so the two pieces will not always add exactly to the receiving total.)

Splitting a season this way changes what you think you are looking at. Three 2025 examples:

• Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Seattle: 1,793 receiving yards, the league lead, with 1,265 of them coming before the catch. The ball was doing the work.
• Puka Nacua, LA Rams: 1,715 yards on a similar target count, but only 1,049 before the catch and 666 after it. A meaningfully different job.
• Christian McCaffrey, San Francisco: 924 receiving yards, and 720 of them after the catch. He was catching the ball roughly two yards past the line and creating everything else himself.

Same market, three completely different sources of production. A model that only reads receiving yards treats all three as the same kind of player.

aDOT: air yards per target

Average depth of target is total air yards divided by targets. It is the per throw version, and it is the number you will actually see on a stat page. Read it as a role description rather than a grade. From the 2025 advanced receiving table:

• Around 2 to 3: a pass catching back. McCaffrey ran a 2.3 aDOT.
• Around 7: underneath and intermediate work. Trey McBride sat at 6.8, Amon-Ra St. Brown at 7.2.
• Around 8 to 9: a full route tree. Ja'Marr Chase at 8.5, Nacua at 9.3.
• 11 and up: a genuinely downfield role. Smith-Njigba at 11.2, George Pickens at 11.3, Chris Olave at 11.8.

Multiply aDOT by targets and you get the season total. Olave saw 156 targets at 11.8, so roughly 1,841 air yards, which led all receivers in 2025. Only 874 of those were completed. That gap is the whole story of a deep role: enormous opportunity, and a lot of it landing on the grass.

Air yards on the quarterback side

Quarterbacks carry two versions. Intended air yards (IAY) counts every attempt. Completed air yards (CAY) counts only the ones that were caught. IAY per attempt is essentially a quarterback's aDOT, and the spread across starters is wide.

In 2025, Matthew Stafford threw for 5,358 intended air yards on 597 attempts, a 9.0 average. Jared Goff threw 578 times for 3,484, a 6.0 average. Nearly the same volume of throws, roughly 1,900 fewer air yards. Goff's receivers made up the difference on the ground, collecting 2,424 yards after the catch to Stafford's 1,850.

This matters directly for pricing. A quarterback with a low IAY per attempt needs volume and YAC to reach a big passing number, which makes his total dependent on his receivers and on game script. A high IAY passer can clear the same number on fewer completions but carries more variance, because deep throws are completed less often. Same logic sits underneath a passing yards prop.

Air yards share and WOPR

Air yards share is a player's air yards divided by his team's total, the downfield twin of target share. Target share tells you how often he is thrown to. Air yards share tells you how much of the offense's actual downfield intent he is carrying. A receiver can own 25 percent of the targets and 40 percent of the air yards, which means he is the one the offense throws at when it wants real yardage.

The common way to combine them is WOPR (weighted opportunity rating), a public formula from analyst Josh Hermsmeyer: 1.5 times target share plus 0.7 times air yards share. Targets get the heavier weight because raw volume is the more reliable input, with downfield role as the multiplier on top. You do not need the exact coefficients to use the idea. Check both shares, and be careful with anyone whose two numbers disagree sharply.

Turning air yards into a bet

• Match the stat to the market. Air yards inform a receiving yards line. They are close to useless for a receptions line, where a low aDOT possession role is the profile you want.
• Use a recent window. Four or five games describes the current offense. A season aDOT can be an average of two different roles stitched together across a coordinator change or an injury.
• Look for aDOT that moved. A receiver whose average depth jumped by three yards over a month has been given a different job. That shows up in the yardage distribution well before it shows up in the posted line.
• Respect the variance. A high aDOT role has a fatter tail in both directions. It supports an over on a game where the total is high and the script is pass heavy, and it is a genuinely risky under.
• Build the number before you look at the price. Otherwise the line anchors your projection.

Where air yards mislead

Air yards are not production. They are opportunity. Olave's league leading air yard total produced 1,163 receiving yards, several hundred fewer than receivers below him on that list. Uncaught air yards pay nothing.

They punish YAC roles unfairly. Screens and check downs generate almost no air yards and can generate a lot of receiving yards. Running backs and slot receivers will always look bad here, and it tells you nothing about whether they are worth betting.

Garbage time inflates them. A team down three scores throws deep on every snap. Those air yards are real but the situation that produced them is not going to repeat.

One deep target swings a small sample. A single 45 yard heave moves a receiver's weekly aDOT by several yards. Never read a one game figure as a role change.

Share is a ratio. Air yards share rises when a team throws shorter, not only when a player is used deeper. Check whether his raw air yard count moved before you conclude anything.

How BetLogic helps

Our NFL yards sheet projects receiving and passing yardage from role and volume inputs rather than from past yardage, so a YAC dependent profile and a downfield profile are not treated as the same player. Where a sportsbook has posted a line, the sheet shows the gap between the projection and that number instead of leaving you to eyeball it. For the volume side of the same read, the target share explainer covers how to project team targets first, and the receptions props guide covers the market where a low aDOT is the feature rather than the flaw.

BetLogic provides data-driven insights only and does not constitute financial or gambling advice. Please bet responsibly and only what you can afford to lose. You must be of legal betting age in your jurisdiction.