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# Bijan Robinson Led NFL's High-Volume Pass-Catchers in Yards After Catch in 2025
- URL: https://www.statsdigest.com/bijan-robinson-screen-game-feature-back-2025/
- Published: 2026-08-22T12:30:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-22T12:30:36.000Z
- Description: Bijan Robinson turned a 0.98 air-yard average into the NFL's best YAC rate among high-volume pass-catchers in
- Author: Bill Seifert
- Tags: Bijan Robinson, Falcons, yards after catch, RB usage, NFL analytics, 2025 NFL

Bijan Robinson's 2025 receiving line — 103 targets, 79 receptions, 820 yards, 4 touchdowns — reads like a very good pass-catching back. His **average air yards** on those targets reads like something else entirely: **0.98**. Passes that, on average, barely cross the line of scrimmage. Kyle Pitts averaged 7.36 air yards per target for Atlanta. Drake London averaged 10.90\. Bijan averaged less than a yard.

That's not a checkdown profile. Nobody's checkdown map is that flat. It's a role built to touch the ball behind the line and turn nothing into everything. And in 2025, Atlanta ran that role at a volume and per-catch efficiency that stood out.

## Table of Contents

1. The number that gives the role away
2. Bijan topped the league's high-volume pass-catchers in YAC
3. The screen game is a first-down concept, not a bailout
4. A three-year build

## 1\. The number that gives the role away

Atlanta's offense finished 2025 below average — **−0.022 EPA/play**, down from **+0.034** in 2024\. Inside that unit, Bijan was the most efficient pass-catcher on the roster:

| Falcons receiver | Targets | Rec    | Yds     | Avg air yards | EPA/target |
| ---------------- | ------- | ------ | ------- | ------------- | ---------- |
| K. Pitts         | 119     | 88     | 928     | 7.36          | +0.207     |
| D. London        | 113     | 68     | 919     | 10.90         | +0.219     |
| **B. Robinson**  | **103** | **79** | **820** | **0.98**      | **+0.258** |
| D. Mooney        | 72      | 32     | 443     | 14.15         | +0.051     |

Bijan cleared both of Atlanta's nominal WR1/TE1 in EPA per target while catching passes thrown, on average, at the line of scrimmage. That's the tell. He wasn't the last read on Michael Penix Jr.'s progressions — he was often the *first* read on a play call designed to get him the ball in space.

His 103 targets ranked 2nd among all NFL running backs in 2025, behind only Christian McCaffrey's 143\. But where McCaffrey averaged 2.78 air yards per target and 6.78 YAC per reception, Bijan averaged 0.98 air yards and **10.85 YAC per reception** — a very different shape of usage despite the similar target volume.

## 2\. Bijan topped the league's high-volume pass-catchers in YAC

Among every NFL pass-catcher — receiver, tight end, or back — with at least 60 receptions in 2025, Bijan Robinson led the league in yards after catch per reception. It's worth being precise about that qualifier: this is a high-volume cohort, not literally every player who caught a pass (a handful of low-volume backs with 15-40 catches posted higher single-season YAC/rec rates on a shorter target diet). Among players who caught the ball 60+ times, though, nobody topped him:

| Player          | Team    | Rec    | YAC     | YAC/rec   |
| --------------- | ------- | ------ | ------- | --------- |
| **B. Robinson** | **ATL** | **79** | **857** | **10.85** |
| D. Achane       | MIA     | 67     | 545     | 8.13      |
| J. Gibbs        | DET     | 77     | 612     | 7.95      |
| D. Metcalf      | PIT     | 61     | 443     | 7.26      |
| K. Gainwell     | PIT     | 77     | 552     | 7.17      |
| K. Shakir       | BUF     | 91     | 621     | 6.82      |
| C. McCaffrey    | SF      | 113    | 766     | 6.78      |

His **857 total receiving YAC** also led all NFL running backs outright — 91 yards clear of McCaffrey and 245 clear of Jahmyr Gibbs, on 34 fewer receptions than McCaffrey.

Narrow the lens to actual screens — targets thrown behind the line of scrimmage — and Atlanta's design shows up more plainly still. Among running backs with at least 30 behind-the-LOS targets in 2025:

| Player          | Team    | Behind-LOS tgts | Rec    | YAC/rec   | EPA/target |
| --------------- | ------- | --------------- | ------ | --------- | ---------- |
| **B. Robinson** | **ATL** | **51**          | **44** | **13.41** | **+0.200** |
| D. Achane       | MIA     | 48              | 43     | 9.77      | −0.066     |
| A. Jeanty       | LV      | 45              | 39     | 8.95      | −0.154     |
| J. Gibbs        | DET     | 41              | 35     | 11.17     | +0.088     |
| C. McCaffrey    | SF      | 37              | 29     | 11.41     | +0.119     |
| K. Gainwell     | PIT     | 37              | 33     | 10.33     | +0.083     |

Bijan led the group in behind-LOS volume, but only barely — 51 targets to Miami's De'Von Achane at 48 and Las Vegas rookie Ashton Jeanty at 45\. What separates him is per-catch and per-target quality, not target monopoly: he turned 44 of those 51 looks (86%) into **590 yards after catch**, a 13.41 YAC/rec figure well clear of the next-closest back, and the only back in this group with both a positive EPA/target *and* a positive-not-marginal one (+0.200, more than double Detroit's Gibbs).

This is the specific role. It's not "pass-catching back" as shorthand for "back who's also a decent receiver." It's a scheme identity: the offense treats behind-the-line throws to Bijan the way most offenses treat a WR screen or a jet sweep — as a manufactured touch, a way of getting the ball into a playmaker's hands with blockers already in front of him. Several other teams (Miami, Las Vegas, Detroit) run a similar-volume version of this concept; Atlanta's version was simply the most efficient of the bunch in 2025.

## 3\. The screen game is a first-down concept, not a bailout

If this were a *checkdown* profile, the volume would concentrate on obvious passing downs — 3rd-and-long, 2-minute, trailing script. It doesn't. Atlanta's most productive down-and-distance for Bijan targets was **1st-and-10-or-more**:

| Situation            | Targets | Rec | Yds | 1st downs | EPA/target |
| -------------------- | ------- | --- | --- | --------- | ---------- |
| 1st down, 10+ to go  | 42      | 36  | 372 | 12        | **+0.414** |
| 3rd-and-short (≤3)   | 6       | 6   | 66  | 6         | **+1.446** |
| All other situations | 55      | 37  | 382 | 16        | +0.009     |

Forty-two 1st-down targets at +0.414 EPA per target is an elite per-play mark on a meaningful sample — and it dwarfs the +0.009 EPA/target Bijan produced on every other down-and-distance combined. Twelve of those 1st-down targets moved the chains. That's not what quarterbacks do when they run out of options; that's a play call the offensive coordinator dialed up on 1st-and-10, with the offense on schedule, because the numbers said this was a high-value way to attack certain looks.

The short-yardage sample is tiny — six plays — but it's a clean 6-for-6 for six first downs and 66 yards. When Atlanta needed a yard or two through the air, Bijan was the answer.

## 4\. A three-year build

The most interesting thing about all of this is that Atlanta didn't stumble into it — the usage pattern built steadily across three seasons:

| Season | Targets | Rec | Yds | Avg air yards | YAC | EPA/target |
| ------ | ------- | --- | --- | ------------- | --- | ---------- |
| 2023   | 86      | 58  | 487 | +0.28         | 519 | **−0.150** |
| 2024   | 72      | 61  | 431 | −0.29         | 531 | **+0.106** |
| 2025   | 103     | 79  | 820 | +0.98         | 857 | **+0.258** |

(A negative average air yards figure isn't an error — it means the typical target that season was thrown at or behind the line of scrimmage, which is exactly what a screen-heavy usage pattern looks like.)

In 2023, Atlanta ran a more traditional pass-catching-back menu and got a below-replacement −0.150 EPA/target for it. In 2024, the average target depth moved to essentially the line of scrimmage (−0.29 air yards) and the efficiency flipped positive. In 2025, volume climbed to 103 targets, depth held near the line, YAC jumped to 857, and the EPA number topped the entire receiving corps.

That happened as the Falcons' overall offense got worse, not better — from +0.034 EPA/play in 2024 to −0.022 in 2025\. In a season where little else on this offense compounded, the screen-game role built around Bijan did. By the numbers here, it was the most efficient facet of what Atlanta did through the air in 2025.

That's what a designed screen-game role can look like when the personnel fits: not a back who happens to catch passes well, but a receiver-adjacent role where the "receiver" is a running back — deployed because his particular skill set (13.41 YAC per behind-the-line catch, the league's best YAC/rec mark among high-volume pass-catchers) makes a near-zero-air-yards diet productive in a way it might not be for most others. It's a reasonable bet that more offenses lean into this shape of usage if it keeps producing at this rate — but that's a projection, not a fact already in the books.