What Are Yards After Catch (YAC)?

Yards after catch (YAC) is the ground a receiver gains once the ball is in his hands, calculated as receiving yards minus air yards. It splits a catch into the throw and the run. Among the 20 players with the most receptions in 2025, 41.2 percent of their receiving yards came after the catch.

How yards after catch is calculated

Every completed pass has two halves. The first is the throw, the distance the ball travels past the line of scrimmage before it is caught, which Pro Football Reference calls yards before catch (YBC). The second is the run, everything the receiver adds afterward. That second half is YAC, and the arithmetic is exactly what it sounds like: receiving yards minus air yards.

Two notes from Pro Football Reference's own definition, because they save arguments later. Yards lost or gained on a fumble after the reception are not counted in YAC, so air yards plus YAC will not always tie out to receiving yards. And the charting comes from Sportradar, updated by 6pm Eastern on the Tuesday after a week's games, so mid-week numbers can lag.

The companion stat is average depth of target (ADOT), the average distance downfield a player is thrown to. ADOT and YAC read together tell you what kind of receiver you are looking at before you know anything else about him.

What the split looked like in 2025

Scale first. NFL offenses combined for 11,217 receptions and 122,413 receiving yards in 2025, per NFL.com's team receiving table. That is 10.9 yards per catch and about 20.6 catches per team per game.

Now the split. Across the 20 players with the most receptions in 2025, all figures from Pro Football Reference's advanced receiving table: 1,906 catches, 22,057 receiving yards, of which 9,077 came after the catch. That is 41.2 percent of the yardage, and 4.76 YAC per reception. Roughly two of every five receiving yards among the league's highest-volume pass catchers were created after the ball arrived.

The league average hides how far apart individual profiles sit. Four players from that same 2025 table:

• Jaxon Smith-Njigba, SEA. Led the NFL with 1,793 receiving yards. ADOT 11.2, YAC 528, which is 29.4 percent of his yardage. He won by being thrown to deep and catching it.
• Christian McCaffrey, SFO. 924 receiving yards, ADOT 2.3, YAC 720, or 77.9 percent. Almost none of his receiving production was the throw.
• Chris Olave, NOR. 100 catches, 1,163 yards, ADOT 11.8, and 2.9 YAC per reception. High volume, almost no run after the catch.
• Bijan Robinson, ATL. 820 receiving yards on 79 catches with 857 YAC, more YAC than total receiving yards, because his yards before catch figure was negative 37. His average target arrived roughly a yard past the line, and plenty arrived behind it.

Same market, four completely different engines. A bettor who treats "receiving yards" as one uniform thing is averaging over that spread.

Why YAC matters for a receptions or receiving yards prop

The practical value is that YAC-heavy and air-yards-heavy production fail in different ways, and the failure modes are what price a prop.

YAC-heavy players have a higher floor and a lower ceiling per catch. A back or a slot receiver working two yards past the line converts targets into catches at a very high rate, so the receptions prop is stable. But he needs volume to reach a yardage number, because no single catch is likely to be worth 40 yards. When the game script turns, the volume goes with it.

Air-yards-heavy players are the reverse. A 12-yard ADOT receiver can miss his receptions number badly and still clear his yardage number on three catches, because each completion is worth more. His distribution is lumpy: more outright busts, more blowouts past the line. See air yards for how that side works.

This is also why YAC and target share answer different questions. Target share tells you how much of the passing game a player commands. YAC tells you what each of those targets is worth once it lands. A receiver can own 28 percent of the targets and still be capped on yardage if all of them come at four yards with a defender draped on him.

Expected YAC, the tracking-data version

Raw YAC rewards the situation as much as the player. A receiver with more blockers than defenders in front of him should gain more after the catch than one who is met immediately, and the box score cannot tell those apart. NFL Next Gen Stats built Expected Yards After Catch (xYAC) to separate them.

The model estimates how many yards an average receiver should gain from the moment of the catch, using tracking inputs: the receiver's speed, direction and acceleration, the distance to the nearest defender, the number of defenders in his path, and the number of blockers in his path, among others. Next Gen Stats defines the relevant space as a 170 degree cone in front of the receiver at the catch point, which excludes paths back toward the line of scrimmage or out of bounds.

Subtract expectation from reality and you get YAC above expectation (xYAC +/-), plus a YAC success rate that asks, play by play, whether the receiver beat his number. Next Gen Stats notes the model is deliberately conservative: in its validation set the maximum actual YAC was 69.3 yards against a maximum predicted 30.8, because no player should ever be expected to gain 60 after the catch. When someone does, that is the receiver, not the situation.

The betting translation is simple. Raw YAC tells you what a player has been getting. YAC above expectation tells you how much of it he is making himself, and therefore how much of it should survive a change of quarterback, scheme, or blocking.

What actually drives YAC

• Where the ball is thrown. This is the largest factor and it belongs to the coordinator, not the receiver. Screens, flats and shallow crossers manufacture YAC; comebacks and back-shoulder throws do not.
• Position. Running backs sit at the top by construction. In 2025 Bijan Robinson averaged 10.8 YAC per reception and Jahmyr Gibbs 8.0, both on an ADOT of roughly zero.
• Broken tackles. Pro Football Reference charts them. Puka Nacua broke 11 tackles on 129 catches in 2025, one every 11.7 receptions, which is the individual half of the equation.
• Blocking by the other pass catchers. Perimeter receivers who block create YAC for the slot. It never shows up in the blocker's line.
• Coverage shell. Two-high safety looks concede the short throw and rally to it. Single-high leaves grass behind the linebackers. The same route earns different YAC against different structures.

Where the metric misleads

YAC per reception is not a talent stat. It is a role stat first. Comparing a back's 8.0 to a boundary receiver's 2.9 tells you the offense uses them differently, and nothing about who is better.

A big YAC total can be a warning. If most of a receiver's yardage comes after the catch on an ADOT under 5, his yardage prop depends on volume and on tackling misses. Both are less repeatable than a downfield target diet.

One long play distorts a season. A single 70 yard catch and run moves a per-reception average meaningfully over a 60 catch sample. Look at the game log before trusting the season number.

Scheme changes do not travel. When a coordinator leaves, the YAC built into the play design leaves with him. Expected YAC and broken tackles are the parts that follow the player.

Charting is charting. Air yards and YAC come from human game charting, not from the official box score. Different providers disagree at the margins, so do not mix sources inside one comparison.

How BetLogic helps

Our NFL receptions sheet shows targets per game, catch rate, target share, the opponent's rank against the position, and the Vegas derived team implied total, with the last five games of receptions and targets beside each name, so you can see whether a player's volume is holding before you price the catch. Our NFL yards sheet covers the yardage side, where the air yards and YAC mix decides how a number is most likely to be reached. Our NFL slate flags which games project to generate plays at all. We do not publish a projected YAC, because the biggest input is a play call we cannot see before kickoff, and we would rather show the usage than dress up a guess. For the wider map of these markets, start with the NFL player props overview.

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