Welcome to Going Deep! This weekly article will use charting data, advanced metrics, and other RotoViz tools to help its readers better understand the challenges facing wide receivers and tight ends in the coming week.
This week’s Going Deep Worksheet can be found at the end of the article and includes data from weeks 16 through 17 of 2020, and all games played in 2021. For a better understanding of the information contained within it, please check out this article.
Atlanta Falcons @ New York Jets
New York’s secondary continues to challenge opponents and has allowed an average of just 1.17 WRs to score more than 10.0 points across its last six games. With Calvin Ridley unavailable, this will be a difficult matchup for Atlanta’s WRs. Tajae Sharpe, Olamide Zaccheaus, and Christian Blake can expect to draw coverage in a fairly equal manner from Bryce Hall, Michael Carter II, Brandin Echols, and Javelin Guidry. All four are allowing less than 5.0 points per game (PPG) when directly targeted and a total of zero touchdowns has been scored on the group since Week 16 of 2020. The foursome might not be as solid as those numbers would suggest given the players it has opposed since Week 16 of 2020. But the talent level of Atlanta’s WRs should allow for the unit to put together another strong performance in Week 5.
Jets’ corners vs direct targets last six games, players with three or more targets
| Player | Yards | Tgts | Recs | PPR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Josh Reynolds | 38 | 6 | 4 | 7.8 |
| Jakobi Meyers | 49 | 5 | 4 | 8.9 |
| Tim Patrick | 74 | 4 | 4 | 11.4 |
| DJ Moore | 47 | 4 | 3 | 7.7 |
| Nick Westbrook-Ikhine | 18 | 4 | 1 | 2.8 |
| Courtland Sutton | 26 | 3 | 3 | 5.6 |
| Ja’Marcus Bradley | 28 | 3 | 2 | 4.8 |
| Chester Rogers | 22 | 3 | 2 | 4.2 |
| Terrace Marshall Jr. | 8 | 3 | 1 | 1.8 |
New York’s passing defense could be more susceptible to big plays and not as tough of a matchup as it normally would be for TEs. They’ll be without free safety Marcus May and strong safety Adrian Colbert. Still, the team ranks fourth in threshold games allowed
to both WRs and TEs.[1]
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Threshold games refer to “10+ point” games for WRs and ‘8+ point’ games for TEs. |
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