Directional passing update for Week 1

During the season we’re going to break down how different offenses are utilizing their weapons all over the field. As the year goes on, patterns begin to emerge that will allow us to anticipate and exploit mismatches between a defense and an offense that we’re targeting in fantasy football. 

Short receiving – left

As we work our way through the short passing zones of the field, per the FTN Fantasy receiver field location stats, it becomes clear that there are a few pass catchers that are head and shoulders above their peers. 

Among pass catchers with at least 30 plays in this direction, D.J. Moore was over 2.2 yards per attempt better than everyone in the league. Another takeaway from this top 10 is that two of last year’s Rams appear on this list. They’ll face plenty of resistance if they’re attacking that side of the field against the Bears in Week 1, though, since short passes weren’t the way to attack Chicago in 2020. 

Short receiving – right

Unsurprisingly, the Chiefs take the two top spots on the short right list, with Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill reigning supreme. This list is impressive in the number of stars that appear on it. The Bengals’ worst short zone was short right, which means Justin Jefferson could have a big day. Truth be told, he could/should have a big day either way, but a weakness in the defense is never a bad thing. We’ll wrap up the short passes with short middle. 

Short receiving – middle

Cooper Kupp is lapping his peers in efficiency in this zone. It’s worth noting that half of the pass catchers on this leaderboard are tight ends. It makes intuitive sense that tight ends would be more likely to appear in this list than the others. As we start to see how defenses can be attacked, we’ll start to take note of which teams we can stream TEs against using the defensive directional passing tool. 

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Deep receiving – left

As we transition into the deep passing part of the tool, we’re dealing with much smaller samples so it’s important to take these with a grain of salt. Last year, there were only 10 wide receivers who tallied 15 or more plays with deep left targets. 

Again, this list is pretty intuitive based on what we’d expect. Marvin Jones is joining D.J. Chark in Jacksonville with a new quarterback, so it’ll be interesting to see how they work together as teammates. 

Deep receiving – right

In the deep right portion of the field, we see primarily team WR2s. Robby Anderson and Jerry Jeudy are both going to be catching passes from new quarterbacks this season, so their usage will be something we’re monitoring closely through the start of the season. 

Deep receiving – middle

There are only five pass catchers who saw at least 10 targets in the deep middle portion of the field. I’m not taking much away from this group.