How To Read An NFL Card

Every number on a card either already happened, or is a price a bookmaker is offering. Our own estimate is one number among them, and it sits below the games it came from — not above them.

A Card, End To End

Tap any part of the card to see what it isClick any part of the card to see what it is

Receiving yards

Example Player

EXAWRvOTHhome

deep threat wide receiver over 2025 · how he is used, not how he will go

On the field: the ball travels a long way before it reaches him.

No line captured

HIS RECORD

Last 5

58yds avg

v OTH· 2 meetings

34yds avg

AT HOMEthis week

51yds

31 games

AWAY

44yds

30 games

BY COVERAGE· history — it does not repeat

V MAN-HEAVY DEFENCES

58yds

10 games

V ZONE-HEAVY DEFENCES

41yds

9 games

OUR NUMBER· one input, not a tip

47ydstypical range 21 – 73

3/5
Cleared Ours: 41
His Middle Game: 7.4
Targets: 24.5
Implied Team Total (Pts): 34%
Games Under Half His Average

The Rest Of This Cardinjury, usage, opponent, role, and what we cannot seeshow

BEFORE YOU LOOK FURTHER

INJURY

No designation

Knee · Full Participation in Practice

WHERE HIS CLUB LISTS HIM

WR 1

SNAP SHARE

88%

86 → 89 → 88

WIND

6 mph

THE OPPONENTshow

COVERAGE THEY PLAY MOST

56% zone

League this window 68% zone · 2nd of 32 for man

POINTS ALLOWED / PLAY

+0.04

BLITZ RATE

24%

725 pass-rush plays

Last season's coverage — no games played yet.

What does man coverage actually change? →

How Well They Play21st of 32— defences here finish 4th – 30th

1st is the best defence, 32nd the weakest.

HIS ROLE· context, not signalshow

TARGET SHARE

24%

SHARE OF THE TEAM’S PASSING DISTANCE

38%

HOW FAR DOWNFIELD HE’S THROWN

11.2

MADE AFTER THE CATCH

42%

YARDS PER AIR YARD

1.66

20+ YD CATCHES / GAME

1.44

0.16 of 40+

DROPS, ALL GAMES

FIRST DOWNS / GAME

4.7

GAMES OF HISTORY

HOW THESE TEAMS PLAY· how they have played, not what they will do

PLAY ACTION

16%

SCREENS

PRE-SNAP MOTION

41%

CHECK THESE YOURSELF — WE CAN'T

Whether the game plan changes. We see usage, not intent.
Anything after the final injury report — a warm-up scratch won't be here.
Whether he is being shadowed. That needs charting we don't hold, and the nearest honest answer is silence.
A designation says whether he is expected to play. It does not say how much, and a cleared player can still be on a snap count.

Illustration only. No real player, no real club, and no bookmaker is named. Odds and lines shown are placeholders. Every research figure quoted is measured from nflverse 2016–2025.

What The Numbers Are

Percentages and ranks speak for themselves. Everything else is one of four things:

Per game — completions, first downs, targets, big catches, and both splits.
Per carry — yards before and after contact. Per game, these would just track how often he got the ball.
A running total — drops and broken tackles. Their labels say so, because they sit next to per-game numbers of a similar size.
In whatever the bet is measured in — yards on a yards card, catches on a receptions card. The unit is printed beside the figure.

His Record

His last five games, then the same five against this week’s opponent. NFL teams meet twice a year at most, so that second strip is often one game or none — and the count is always shown, because one game is not a record.

The Two Splits

Home and away, and against man-heavy or zone-heavy defences. Each side shows its own game count — an average over two games and one over seventeen are not the same thing.

Neither split tells you about the next game. The coverage one does not even hold up: across 202 players, a gap one season says nothing about the gap the next (−0.04 on a −1-to-1 scale), and it flips direction between halves of the SAME season. A twenty-yard gap is what eight games against eight games looks like. It is history, nothing more.

The Opponent

A defence’s man rate always appears next to the league’s rate for the same period. It has to: whoever charts these games changed how they do it, and the league figure jumped 29% to 49% to 32% while the football stayed the same. On its own, a raw rate means different things in different years.

Blitz rate counts only the plays a defence actually rushed the passer on — not every snap. Out of every snap it would roughly halve, and it would rise and fall with how often the OTHER team ran, which tells you nothing about this defence.

How many yards a defence gives up is a poor guide to next season — 0.26 on a 0-to-1 scale. So the rank comes with the RANGE of places defences at that rank have actually finished. A 27th can mean anywhere from 19th to 32nd, and the card shows that rather than hiding it.

In week 1 there is no football from this season yet, so everything is last year’s. Style does carry over a summer, just less strongly. The card marks it when that is what it is showing.

The Injury Line

Three states, and two look alike. A designation — Out, Doubtful, Questionable — means his club filed one. “No designation” means the report is out and does not mention him: good news. A dash means no report yet, which is not the same as being fit. Clubs file from the Wednesday of game week.

His Role

The steadiest numbers on the card — all of them hold up better year to year than anything in the opponent block. They are also the least use for this week: none shifts an estimate by more than a rounding error. They tell you what his job is, not what Sunday holds.

Man And Zone, And What Each Does To A Passing Line

In man, each defender picks a receiver and follows him. In zone, each guards an area and hands receivers off between them. Every defence plays both — the card just says which one this defence leans on, and how heavily.

There is no run answer here, and that is a limit of the data rather than an omission. Coverage is only charted on dropbacks: in 2024, 22 of 13,910 designed runs carried a coverage label — 0.16% of them. Anyone offering you a rushing split by man and zone is not reading this source.

On passes the difference is large and it shows up in every season measured. Against man, completions run about 11 to 12 points lower (57.4% against 68.7% over 2022–2025) and throws travel about 1.4 yards further downfield (8.7 air yards against 7.2).

The bottom line is a near-tie: +0.137 expected points per attempt against man and +0.135 against zone, over 75,168 attempts — and the sign flips between seasons. Man does not stop offences. It changes the SHAPE of what they do: fewer catches, longer ones, more variance.

So a heavy-man opponent means something different on a catches line than on a yards line. Fewer passes are completed, so a catch count has further to climb. The ones that land go further, so a yardage total can arrive in two plays instead of six. That describes the SHAPE of a day, not which way it goes — and the split on the card is his history, which does not carry to next year.

If a number is not on a card, either we do not have it or it did not survive being measured. Nothing here is a tip.

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