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Touchdowns Through the Air

In a week featuring so many marquee running backs - Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry, Jahmyr Gibbs (and likely David Montgomery), James Cook, Joe Mixon, Kyren Williams, Isaiah Pacheco, and Brian Robinson Jr, it easy to select a couple and highlight why they’ll likely score 6 in the divisional round.

Instead, we’re focusing on who may catch one in the air. Although some of these highlighted players are going to seem just as easy as picking a running back to run one in, there’s hard data behind each player we chose for the 4 games this weekend.

Houston/Kansas City: Xavier Worthy

The Texans passing defense has struggled all year, allowing the second-most passing touchdowns per game (2.0) and the most receiving touchdowns per game to wide receivers (1.46). Ladd McConkey found the end zone against them last week, and the last wideout to score before him was Xavier Worthy. Worthy heads into tonight's game on a hot streak, having caught 5 or more passes in each of his last 5 games and scored a touchdown in 3 straight.

With Houston's defense faltering and Worthy in top form, plus his strong head-to-head history, he's primed for another big performance in this divisional matchup.

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Detroit/Washington: McLaurin, LaPorta

We couldn’t decide which player to highlight here, so here are two quick tidbits:

Terry McLaurin has been a beast on the road this season finding the end zone, with 10 of his 14 touchdowns coming on the road this season. He has 4 TDs over his last 3 away games.

But the catch is that the Lions are a top-ten team in receiving touchdowns allowed. They allow 0.75 receiving touchdowns per game to wide receivers, 9th best in the NFL, and only 0.83 passing touchdowns per game (2nd in the NFL).

For Detroit, we’re highlighting Sam LaPorta.

Tight ends score against Washington at the 6th highest rate per game in the NFL, and although LaPorta only had 7 touchdowns this year, he had 2 in his last 3 games.

LA/Philly: AJ Brown

Give me a leaky Rams secondary versus one of the best receivers in the game. LA allows 1.67 passing touchdowns per game, 23rd in the NFL, and 1.23 receiving touchdowns per game to wide receivers.

Brown started the year hot - 3 touchdowns, 3 games. He followed that up with 1 touchdown over his next 7 games before closing out the season strong with 3 touchdowns in his final 3 regular season games. Brown was held out of the end zone last week in the wild card versus Green Bay, but only had one reception on 3 targets.

Baltimore/Buffalo: Mack Hollins

Keon Coleman & Khalil Shakir trailed Mack Hollins for the receiving TD lead on the Bills this season, believe it or not. But Hollins is in a 5 game TD slump, not having found the end zone since December 8th in LA.

And this is the game to do it; the Ravens have one of the worst secondary in the league. They allow 177.15 yards per game to wide receivers (27th), 13.31 receptions (28th), and 1.23 receiving TDs per game (29th).

They allowed 2 receiving TDs to wide receivers last week: Van Jefferson and George Pickens.

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See you Tuesday for some NBA breakdowns!