Why do people care about aDOT? (1 Viewer)

[Banger]

I like metrics and data and this year all of the sudden I keep hearing about players aDOT's (average depth of target). I had no idea what this even meant and had to google it. It seems like data for data sake but I don't understand how it's actionable or predictive. Is a higher adot better? What does it matter if you've got a high aDOT but you don't get targets or you can't catch the ball? Is it used in conjunction with other metrics? I have to imagine guys like Kupp/Amon Ra probably have a low aDOT but are amongst the top wideouts in the league and I imagine Tyreek Hill has a really high aDOT.

From a defensive POV, I can understand why you'd want to know that stat about a QB as it may indicate that they like to check down or stretch the field but for WR's I don't get it. What am I missing?

 

[Long Ball Larry]

It's an indication of how the receiver is generally used in the offense end how likely he is to have higher outputs in the future. In general, the deeper your targets, the more yards you are likely to get. It's obviously not the be-all and end-all for every receiver. If someone has a great aDOT and doesn't produce over several weeks, then it doesn't really matter. And vice versa. But if you are trying to gauge which players might be in line to break out, then it can be a useful data point.

 

[Long Ball Larry]

Examining Advanced NFL Stats — DVOA, EPA, CPOE, aDOT & More

The NFL has a wide array of statistics available to help you handicap games. Learn which ones to trust and how to use them together with this guide.

www.covers.com

Air yards and average depth of target (aDOT)​

What are air yards and aDOT?​

Air yards are the number of yards the ball travels through the air on a given target. Whereas air yards would be a volume metric, aDOT takes air yards and turns them into a rate statistic by dividing them by targets.

Why should bettors use air yards and aDOT?​

Because air yards are a volume metric, they are a good indicator of the total opportunity. More distinctly, if a player is converting an abnormally high or low amount of his air yards, he will likely regress (and likely to a career average level of proportionate production). This is particularly useful for player props and DFS.

aDOT, on the other hand, is a great way to identify a receiver’s role in the offense. A receiver with a higher aDOT is likely to be the field-stretching deep threat, whereas a lower aDOT is likely to be the possession or slot receiver. Identifying a player’s role helps capitalize on props for players who may be filling in due to injury or to identify a specific coverage mismatch.

What are the shortcomings of air yards and aDOT?​

A receiver’s role can change from season to season and even in the middle of one. For example, Robby Anderson was a renowned deep threat with the New York Jets (15.1 aDOT in 2019) before signing with Carolina in 2020.

The prevailing assumption was that he would maintain that role with Carolina, but he surprisingly finished with a 9.8 aDOT and played a possession-heavy role. Then heading into the 2021 season, it was assumed he would keep his new possession role, but his role seems to have reverted (14.6 aDOT).

 

[Boone22]

I agree with @Banger. Give me the guy who gets peppered with targets in a ppr league over a big play guy any day.

 

[Ardbeg4ever]

I find they are like spices, a little is good but too much ruins the dish. Podcasters like Derek Brown are INSUFFERABLE to listen to as they are always spewing out "Stuff rate", "broken tackle rate", "Yards per route run", they are descriptive statistics not PREDICTIVE statistics.

 

[Nick Vermeil]

Are we talking about a blue dot or an orange dot?

 

[Banger]

It's an indication of how the receiver is generally used in the offense end how likely he is to have higher outputs in the future. In general, the deeper your targets, the more yards you are likely to get. It's obviously not the be-all and end-all for every receiver. If someone has a great aDOT and doesn't produce over several weeks, then it doesn't really matter. And vice versa. But if you are trying to gauge which players might be in line to break out, then it can be a useful data point.

Thanks...that's kind of what I suspected. So a guy like Mims I'm assuming has a really high aDOT and not a lot of targets/routes but might increase in the future. I imagine though you need to know how accurate the QB is as well because it doesn't matter much if a WR runs a ton of deep routes and the QB can't get them the ball. This isn't something you can take at face value and use to draft/pickup players. Target trends seem sooo much more predictive and useful than aDOT.

 

[Banger]

I find they are like spices, a little is good but too much ruins the dish. Podcasters like Derek Brown are INSUFFERABLE to listen to as they are always spewing out "Stuff rate", "broken tackle rate", "Yards per route run", they are descriptive statistics not PREDICTIVE statistics.

Bingo, that's exactly what I'm talking about. There are so many people talking about snap count %'s. Buy low/pick up player X because his snap count % is on the rise! What does it matter if they don't get the ball or when they get it they don't do anything special with it? Seems they are overcomplicating something that isn't that difficult.

 

[Banger]

I agree with @Banger. Give me the guy who gets peppered with targets in a ppr league over a big play guy any day.

exactly. Unless we're talking Randy Moss / Tyreek Hill I have to think that high aDOT players in today's game aren't as valuable or are at least higher much more variability. Give me the consistency of a high floor player with some upside vs a guy that goes for 5, 30, 3, 12, 25, 6. You get the consistency thru targets and often short ones. I think I'm ANTI-aDOT!!

 

[Bri]

It's kind of naive how some use it. Zone, man, pressing, cushion...every team won't necessarily even play D on the WR the same.

It's gotta be looked at with a whisky in your hand.

I like to think on it(idk anyone with this stat live, simple math in head scenario) early in a game and when it's over because a lot of OCs will call a quick short gimme pass to get a player rolling. By itself, I'd be annoyed at all the three yard passes across the league in the first Q but when ya look at it at the end of the game, it's kind of interesting.

Totally fictional per quarter-
Pitts 3 targets 3 catches for 8 yards
Pitts 1 of 4 targets for 20 yards
Jonnu 2 for 2 for 36 yards
Pitts 2 of 2 for 38 yards.

To me that's the warmup wakeup then use his legs then the vet showing him how it's done then the young guy doing it.

If you had an adot of like 12 or somesuch what are you gleaning from that?
The stat though inspired me to look at game logs and watch with adot in mind and ...possibly I see things. (Do we ever really know)

 

[Bri]

QB adot as is is absurd. Last I looked everyone was under a yard and people were discussing .9 versus .5 and oh cmon

 

[Bri]

Examining Advanced NFL Stats — DVOA, EPA, CPOE, aDOT & More

The NFL has a wide array of statistics available to help you handicap games. Learn which ones to trust and how to use them together with this guide.

www.covers.com

Air yards and average depth of target (aDOT)​

What are air yards and aDOT?​

Air yards are the number of yards the ball travels through the air on a given target. Whereas air yards would be a volume metric, aDOT takes air yards and turns them into a rate statistic by dividing them by targets.

Why should bettors use air yards and aDOT?​

Because air yards are a volume metric, they are a good indicator of the total opportunity. More distinctly, if a player is converting an abnormally high or low amount of his air yards, he will likely regress (and likely to a career average level of proportionate production). This is particularly useful for player props and DFS.

aDOT, on the other hand, is a great way to identify a receiver’s role in the offense. A receiver with a higher aDOT is likely to be the field-stretching deep threat, whereas a lower aDOT is likely to be the possession or slot receiver. Identifying a player’s role helps capitalize on props for players who may be filling in due to injury or to identify a specific coverage mismatch.

What are the shortcomings of air yards and aDOT?​

A receiver’s role can change from season to season and even in the middle of one. For example, Robby Anderson was a renowned deep threat with the New York Jets (15.1 aDOT in 2019) before signing with Carolina in 2020.

The prevailing assumption was that he would maintain that role with Carolina, but he surprisingly finished with a 9.8 aDOT and played a possession-heavy role. Then heading into the 2021 season, it was assumed he would keep his new possession role, but his role seems to have reverted (14.6 aDOT).

Air yards are moreso an OL stat or a defensive opponent stat.
Look at avg time to throw and it matches very well

 

[Boston]

I find they are like spices, a little is good but too much ruins the dish. Podcasters like Derek Brown are INSUFFERABLE to listen to as they are always spewing out "Stuff rate", "broken tackle rate", "Yards per route run", they are descriptive statistics not PREDICTIVE statistics.

Nailed it…some people just need to show how smart they are…wish they would stick to baseball and all the foolish stats they have that you need an MIT degree to understand.

 

[Banger]

ok, makes me feel better that I'm not missing something. Like some guy from some other website that was in here in the pre-season in the James Cook thread stating that Harris was the steal in the Buff backfield because Cook couldn't be successful because he was less than 200 pounds. That was the stat and the end of the conversation.

Back in the day, I remembered going around and around about Tomlinson and that the wheels were sure to fall off because he exceeded some dreaded touch count that others few that hit the count (think it was 400 touches) had down years the following year. We know how that worked out. Stats are good but there are always exceptions....

 

[TampaMike19]

Ideally you want moderate adot and your WRs producing yac and creating yards on their own. High adot catch and fall guys like Sutton are ceiling compromised. Low adot like Rondale Moore and he just can’t produce outside of ppr

 

[The Frankman]

Ideally you want moderate adot and your WRs producing yac and creating yards on their own. High adot catch and fall guys like Sutton are ceiling compromised. Low adot like Rondale Moore and he just can’t produce outside of ppr

This. I think aDot is kinda getting a bad rap in here, like all sabermetrics you want to hunt predictive stats because they usually set up usage indicators that could become good/elite. That's how you catch guys before the rise as opposed to "they're already risen" and you have to pay huge amounts of FAAB.

If a guy has a high percentage of snaps it's usually a good indicator that he doesn't come off the field even in different packages. Then you look at his routes run and target rate to get a good feel of his role in the offense, plus aDot. Hayden Winks used to publish a piece called Fantasy Football Model for then-NBC SportsEDGE last year, I loved reading it.

 

[Ardbeg4ever]

I think the best use of the stats are if something changes. For example, I wanted to strangle people last year that kept telling me to keep starting Kyle Pitts because of "Air Yards", "% routes run" etc, if those things were that important, they would show up in a category I track called FANTASY POINTS! Now if Atlanta traded Ridder for G.Minshew, now those stats would be useful because he might convert a higher percentage of those air yards. But if the situation doesn't fundamentally change, then all those advanced statistics average out to Fantasy points. By the way, my job is to interpret data.

 

[Zow]

Are we talking about a blue dot or an orange dot?

Heck, I thought he was talking about the Arizona Department of Transportation.

 

[Ardbeg4ever]

Are we talking about a blue dot or an orange dot?

Heck, I thought he was talking about the Arizona Department of Transportation.

My Ping irons are "blue dot"

 

[jtd13]

I find adot helpful for contextualizing counting stats, and also seeing numerically how guys are getting used. That's what most advanced stats are about, adding context to counting stats.

 

[Snoopy]

Doesn't the QB have a green dot?

 

[Biabreakable]

I like metrics and data and this year all of the sudden I keep hearing about players aDOT's (average depth of target). I had no idea what this even meant and had to google it. It seems like data for data sake but I don't understand how it's actionable or predictive. Is a higher adot better? What does it matter if you've got a high aDOT but you don't get targets or you can't catch the ball? Is it used in conjunction with other metrics? I have to imagine guys like Kupp/Amon Ra probably have a low aDOT but are amongst the top wideouts in the league and I imagine Tyreek Hill has a really high aDOT.

From a defensive POV, I can understand why you'd want to know that stat about a QB as it may indicate that they like to check down or stretch the field but for WR's I don't get it. What am I missing?

Generally I think yards per target is a much more useful statistic than aDOT is.

Not all targets are the same. A player who is being targeted deeper down the field will have a lower completion rate because its a more difficult throw than a shorter target is. It takes longer to set up for one and the ball will be in the air longer as well. So there is more time for something to be off with that. It also just harder for a QB to be accurate on the longer throws than it is the shorter throws. If a deep target is completed though, it most often will be worth more yards or possibly even a TD. However a short target could be just as many or more yards because of yards after the catch and could end up being a TD as well.

I used to be somewhat fixated on catch rate for receivers until I realized that some receivers might have poor catch rates because they are being targeted on deeper more difficult throws. I still would prefer a more consistent receiver than a boom or bust one, but understanding that aDOT affects completion percentage is something I had to learn.

PPR scoring exuberates this issue somewhat. A player who is getting a lot of targets, even if they are short targets is going to make a lot of receptions and score a lot of points. Even though Randy Moss might get more yards on one catch than Booker would get in a game for example. In some ways getting fewer yards per reception leads to the team needing to throw the ball more to get enough receptions for that player to score, or put the team in position to score. But who is the better player here really? Marty Booker or Randy Moss? Clearly its Moss but Booker could outscore him just because of the high number of receptions in PPR.

Yards per target lets you fairly compare all players regardless of if they are getting short or long targets. If they are getting a lot of short passes their completion percentage may be high but their yards per target will be low and the opposite. Its still not a perfect equalizer. The number of targets still matters, but I think that is better than aDOT is for projecting players future performance.

I have heard some say aDOT or air yards had some predictive ability because if that player ends up catching a higher percentage of those deep passes in future games they will gain a lot of yards. Which does make some sense. Its a regression to the mean type of idea. But I dont know if this theory has actually been proven to be true.

 

[Biabreakable]

I think the best use of the stats are if something changes. For example, I wanted to strangle people last year that kept telling me to keep starting Kyle Pitts because of "Air Yards", "% routes run" etc, if those things were that important, they would show up in a category I track called FANTASY POINTS! Now if Atlanta traded Ridder for G.Minshew, now those stats would be useful because he might convert a higher percentage of those air yards. But if the situation doesn't fundamentally change, then all those advanced statistics average out to Fantasy points. By the way, my job is to interpret data.

Well Pitts is a great example.

Very good rookie season which is pretty unusual for a player from the TE position, so pretty reasonable to think he would improve in his 2nd season n the league.

So at least early on in the season one might think all those air yards will become completions at some point due to regression to the mean, and Pitts performance from the previous season.

However his QB changed from Matt Ryan to Marcus Mariota and Ridder who were not as good as Ryan. Even though Ryan was pretty much washed up he still completed 67& of his passes in 2021 compared to 62% for the replacement QBs.

Getting air yards from Marcus Mariota is not the same as getting them from Matt Ryan.

What good is all those air yards when Pitts is only catching 25% of them in these games?

Pitts catch rate fell from 62% in 2021 to 47% in 2022

Pitts yards per target went from 9 in 2021 to 6 in 2022 and his targets almost cut in half.

Yes Pitts was injured and missed 7 games. The injury certainly a factor but the main difference here was the change in the quality of the QB play.