Everyone knows you can’t feed your family with air yards. Air yards are the passing yards intended for a receiver at the catch point, but you need them to actually be caught to produce fantasy points, which, of course, can be fed to your family and cover most of the basic food groups. This is my attempt to quantify which quarterbacks will feed my kids.
Note: I do not have kids. Therefore, this should not be considered sound parenting advice.
Effective Air Yards per Game
Some passes can be caught. Others can’t. Pro Football Focus charts this with the creative name of “catchable targets.” Denny Carter wrote about this recently regarding receivers who may have some better luck in 2026 via seeing more catchable opportunities. Inspired by this, I wanted to dig deeper, specifically into the quarterback side of the equation.
Taking all of a quarterback’s catchable throws multiplied by the average target depth of said throws gives us Effective Air Yards. These are all of the air yards a quarterback’s receivers had a chance at. I’m going to boil this idea down even further, to the point where it sticks to the bottom of the pan. For now, these are 2025’s top five passers in EAY per game:
- Matthew Stafford - 193
- Trevor Lawrence - 174
- Drake Maye - 171
- Dak Prescott - 170
- Brock Purdy - 159
Honestly, nothing too surprising here. Five quarterbacks appeared on an MVP ballot in some form or fashion last year. Three of them are on the above list. The other two — Prescott and Purdy — are also talented quarterbacks.
Here are the bottom five quarterbacks:
- Bryce Young - 111
- Tua Tagovailoa - 108
- Kirk Cousins - 96
- Geno Smith - 95
- Aaron Rodgers - 86
Again, this is pretty intuitive. These guys were all bad last year. It’s shocking how far below the rest of the league Aaron Rodgers sits. He was both a low aDOT and a low-volume passer in 2025. Both his target depth and attempt total should rise under Mike McCarthy, but even that won’t do more than drag him from last place to almost last place.
▶ RELATED: Denny Carter breaks down who benefits from pass-heavy red zone offenses
Most accurate quarterbacks
Controlling for volume gives us a better way to judge the ability of a quarterback while ignoring whether or not they simply got to throw the ball a lot. If you take those Effective Air Yards and divide them by attempts, you get the average target depth of each quarterback’s catchable throws. This is ultimately going to look similar to a Completion Percent over Expected. That datapoint adjusts the completion rate for aDOT. This is simply doing the reverse: adjusting aDOT for completion rate, though the pass does not actually need to be completed, only accurate. I won’t dwell on it too long. A note I find very funny is the largest and smallest differences between aDOT and Effective aDOT. This is to say, which quarterbacks came the closest to completing the full array of passes they attempted. These are the lowest differentials:
- Lamar Jackson - 0.9
- Brock Purdy - 0.9
- Mac Jones - 0.9
- Sam Darnold - 0.8
- Jared Goff - 0.7
It’s all scheme merchants (and Lamar Jackson)! This isn’t a bad thing and I don’t actually believe these quarterbacks are scheme merchants. It’s more notable to me that the teams with extremely sharp coaches put their quarterbacks in positions to have their accurate throw rates closely align with their entire body of attempts. This is a compliment to both the coaches and the quarterbacks. It also has me bullish on Fernando Mendoza, who is getting Klint Kubiak as his play-caller this year.
Now the bottom five:
- Patrick Mahomes - 2.4
- Baker Mayfield - 2.4
- Jaxson Dart - 2.3
- Jalen Hurts - 2.2
- Spencer Rattler - 2.2
As gruesome as it is to see my GOAT at the end of this list, he could not buy a deep completion to save his life last year. The same was more or less true of all of these quarterbacks. None of them ranked better than 23rd in adjusted deep completion rate. This entire exercise will not be kind to the quarterbacks who can’t hit the long ball.
Most effective quarterbacks
Lastly, when looking for quarterbacks who create the most potable air yards, it’s important to know which passers actually convert their dropbacks into attempts in the first place. A passer can take a sack, scramble, or throw the ball away — which is typically charted as a pass without a target — instead of throwing to a receiver. Factoring this in yields Effective Air Yards per Dropback.
The names at the top aren’t awfully surprising, though the distance between Stafford and the No. 2 QB is absurd. Stafford sits in the pocket and hammers out high-value throws like it’s his job. It is his job. Maye again is chasing him down in this stat. I’ll only add that A.J. Brown should be going from a decent passer to an elite one on June 1st.
Jordan Love and Daniel Jones round out the top 10 passers in EAYPD. These two in particular are notable because their teams dramatically condensed their receiver rooms in the offseason. The Packers shed 131 targets between Romeo Doubs and Dontayvion Wicks. Michael Pittman alone accounted for 111 targets in Indy last year. They also moved on from Adonai Mitchell midseason. By any other name, this is a Josh Downs and Jayden Reed tweet. I’m falling for it again.
▶ Check out RotoPat’s NFL GM Rankings
Somewhat effective quarterbacks
The middle of the range is arguably more interesting than the top. Michael Penix sticks out as a winner here, given his generally poor accuracy. Pro Football Focus charted him with the league’s worst accurate throw rate on attempts shorter than 10 yards downfield. On the other hand, Penix sat at 15th in accuracy on throws 10+ yards downfield. He also logged an impressive 12.3 percent pressure-to-sack rate and doesn’t scramble, meaning a good chunk of his dropbacks turn into passes. Of note, Tua Tagovailoa ranks 22nd in EAYPD compared to 12th for Penix. Tua is likely a more accurate quarterback on the whole, but Penix attempts more high-value passes and doesn’t waste nearly as many dropbacks with sacks.
Caleb Williams also falls under the banner of inaccurate quarterbacks who do surprisingly well in this metric. Williams ranked 29th out of 30 qualified QBs in completion percent over expected, trailing only Penix. Like Penix, he did his best work when throwing downfield. During the regular season, Williams attempted the fourth-most deep passes and logged the fifth-highest accurate throw rate (46.7 percent) on those attempts. Williams was far less accurate compared to the rest of the league on short throws, sinking his CPOE. Whether or not he’s a good passer depends on who you ask. This is the percent of each Chicago pass-catcher’s air yards that were deemed catchable:
- Luther Burden - 79.1%
- Colston Loveland - 65.6%
- Olamide Zaccheaus - 53.9%
- DJ Moore - 51.4%
- Rome Odunze - 45.8%
Almost no receiver in the league had it as good as Burden last year. Loveland got by and the rest of the pass-catchers were scattered to the winds. Burden likely won’t be so lucky next year while Odunze should get a few more catchable deep balls via randomness alone.
Moore is going to a quarterback in Josh Allen who produced fewer catchable air yards, but Moore wasn’t a beneficiary of Williams’ competence in 2025. I expect his target quality to improve, though not by as much as fantasy drafters taking him as the WR25.
Ineffective Quarterbacks
Interestingly, the bottom-three quarterbacks all play for teams that added multiple high-profile pass-catchers this offseason. The Titans signed Wan’Dale Robinson and drafted Carnell Tate. The Jets drafted Kenyon Sadiq and Omar Cooper Jr. The Steelers traded for Michael Pittman and drafted Germie Bernard. For players on these teams to hit, their quarterback needs to improve or they need to consolidate targets. Carnell Tate could amass targets with ease and his quarterback should improve. Garrett Wilson will likely compile targets as well, though he has never been an awfully efficient player, and that isn’t going to change this year. In Pittsburgh, there isn’t much hope that Rodgers is going to turn over a new leaf at 42 years old. It’s also hard to imagine any of the wideouts truly dominating the Steelers’ passing game. I’m not dying to draft players on these teams, but the Steelers in particular look like an ugly setup for fantasy production.
