Red isn’t associated with good things typically. In the red is to be in debt. The red button in the movies is always the bomb or explosion trigger. The only two times in sports that red is associated with good things is when a golfer is in the red, or under par, or when a football team makes it to their opponents red zone. The red zone is even named after the dangerous connotation that that area of the field has for the defense in football and not the opportunity it presents for the offense. Think about it, if it was named after the opportunity the offense had, it would be called the green zone or the touchdown zone or the scoring zone or the money zone since that’s where a majority of the scoring plays in a football game happen.
In a previous Draft Guide piece, Studying Red Zone Targets, we talked about just how many scores throughout the season come from that part of the field; hint: it’s a lot. With fantasy football being so touchdown-dependent for putting up the winning scores and with nearly three-quarters of the offensive touchdowns scored in a season come from the area inside the 20-yard line, it’s about time that we delve deeper into what teams are making the most frequent trips there, how they are running their offenses in that section of the field, who was handling the biggest workloads for the teams, and what percentage of each player’s point total from last year came from the red zone so you can take these into account when drafting your fantasy football teams this year.
Going back to the Studying Red Zone Targets piece for a minute, over the last few years, the rate at which touchdowns are scored in the red zone hasn’t really changed whether it be through the air or on the ground and in general the overall rate scored inside the 20-yard-line has stay pretty close to the same over the last few years as well. I bring this up because in looking at the data for team trips to the red zone per game and for the year, it was surprising to find that the trips to the red zone were more evenly spread out in 2019 than they were in 2018. The table below bears that out:
The table is sorted by 2019 trips per game from highest to lowest and has accompanying 2018 data for the same team next to it as a comparison point. The first thing you may notice is that only one team hit the four trips per game mark in 2019 while three were at least 4.2 last year led by the Rams at 4.6 such trips a game. The lowest in 2019 was the Jets at 2.1, but outside of them, all of the teams were spread between 4.0 and 2.5 trips while in 2018 they were between 4.6 and 1.8 with three teams being at 2.1 or fewer times reaching the opponent’s 20 a game. So this simple analysis is telling us that offenses are doing two things, firstly, they are getting closer to each other in terms of being able to move the ball down the field despite there still being outliers, and secondly even though the trips were more spread out between the teams, there are the exact same number of red zone trips made by offenses the last two years, 1,622, which means the average team on the average week is making roughly 3.2 trips to the scoring zone. If you want more in-depth breakdowns as to what coaching systems changes may affect these numbers going forward, check out Howard Bender’s Coaching System pieces.
The tables above show a breakdown of the total number of plays number by each team in the red zone last year. They also breakdown the percentage of pass and run plays inside the 20 and the 10 to see if a team’s strategy changed at all as they got closer to the goal line or not. We’ve already talked about how closely together the teams are in terms of overall trips to the red zone but what might shock you is to see that overall there is a near 100 play difference between the team that spent the most plays inside the 20 and the team that spent the least plays inside the 20 in the Patriots and the Jets. In fact, the Jets are the only team to register less than 100 plays run in that section of the field all season and are 20 plays below the next fewest. What shouldn’t surprise you is to see that nearly every team gets more run happy inside the 10 than they are inside the 20. Even the Vikings, who were already the team with the highest run-percentage inside the 20 at 62.1-percent, jumped up inside the 10 and they finished just a tick over 70-percent run plays within 30 feet of the goal line. Another way you can tell that the percentages flip depending on where in the red zone a team is, is by looking at the league average row and see that the run and pass percentages essentially completely flip from inside the 20 to inside the 10 as to which is the more popular play call. It makes sense too as the tighter field the closer to the goal line makes passing windows tougher.
So know that we’ve seen what the teams as a whole have done over the last couple of years in the red zone, we need to see how exactly that has been spread out between the players over the last year and who had the biggest impact on their team’s success near the end zone. What better place to start than the most important position on the field...quarterback.
There’s a lot going on in that table huh? Well it shows the 2019 fantasy points posted by the top-30 quarterbacks and the points they scored inside the 20 and 10 yard lines as well as what percentage of their total that was. The two columns on the right show the percentage of rushing or receiving plays the quarterbacks accounted for out of the team’s total. It’s sorted by the highest percentage of red zone points to least.
Where’s Mahomes? The half a billion-dollar man is at the bottom of the table? Are you sure the numbers are right? Yes I have triple-checked the figures and they are indeed correct, and fit with what we saw from Kansas City’s offense last year as the Chiefs were just not that big of a red zone team and instead favored the big plays. So what do you do with that info if you are hoping to roster Mahomes this year? Simple, realize that he missed a few games and that big plays aren’t a thing that keep up from year to year, and the Chiefs are a perfect example of this as they’ve had a top offense two years in a row but in 2018 Mahomes posted 35 of his 50 touchdowns in the red zone and last year that dropped to 11 of 26. Meanwhile, the other top QB off of draft boards is Lamar Jackson and given how much he runs, you’d think a ton of point would’ve come from the red zone but he’s tied for 10th at 35-percent of his immense 419 total points. Circling back to the running thing for Jackson, you’d think he’d also lead all QBs in percentage of rushing plays that he touched the ball in the red zone for his team, but that’s not the case as the QB of a team that circles the wagons (see what I did there) like no one else, the Buffalo Bills and Josh Allen , actually carried the ball more in the red zone and inside the 10 than did Jackson. Quarterback is a position though where more points will be made up elsewhere on the field because in a standard league, a passing touchdown is weighted less than rushing or receiving scores and that becomes evident when looking at the players total points column and seeing how quarterbacks who are all close to each other in total points are spread throughout the table with three of the bottom four QBs by red zone percentage outscoring both of the top two QBs in terms of red zone percentage.
There’s a lot going on in that table huh? Well it shows the 2019 fantasy points posted by the top-50 running backs and the points they scored inside the 20 and 10 yard lines based on PPR scoring as well as what percentage of their total that was. The two columns on the right show the percentage of rushing or receiving plays the running backs accounted for out of the team’s total. It’s sorted by the highest percentage of red zone points to least.
Everyone loves to get their hands on the bell-cow running backs early in fantasy football drafts or hopes to nab a back that becomes that later in the season in the later rounds, but either way, solidifying a guy that can get in the end zone and get key work for his team is essential to doing well in fantasy football leagues. Here’s the thing though, running backs might be the most red zone dependent players on the field since touchdowns are the real key to them putting up valuable points days in DFS or seasonal and we’ve already seen how just under 90-percent of rushing touchdowns over the last four years are scored inside the 20-yard line, meaning we need to focus on the guys who are getting work in the red zone once the bell cow backs are gone.
Aaron Jones is brought up as the test case for that point by every analyst this year because Jones had such a huge touchdown season last year and thus boosted his overall points total to a whopping 319 in PPR formats. However, it might be surprising to realize that he’s not in the top-five of running backs in terms of percentage of points scored in the red zone. He is still primed for regression because of the high touchdown total but the percentage of points in the red zone is sustainable even if the point total comes down. The guy that is glossed over is Todd Gurley and he’s the one that tops the list in terms of percentage of points inside the 20. That’s mainly because his explosiveness was greatly diminished last year and so all of the scoring plays came inside the 20 which bolstered the percentages.
Reading the chart can also help determine who were the shorter yardage vulture type backs. Take Boston Scott for example, he posted 33-percent of his total points inside the red zone but only accounted for 8.4-percent of the team plays in that range. There are other guys like that as well like Jordan Howard who had 41-percent of his points near the goal line but wasn’t handling more than 16-percent of the team’s rushing or passing attempts. Howard will be in a committee again in Miami this year and this info might come in handy for those trying to determine his role ahead of the season.
There’s a lot going on in that table huh? Well it shows the 2019 fantasy points posted by the top-50 wide receivers and the points they scored inside the 20 and 10 yard lines based on PPR scoring as well as what percentage of their total that was. The two columns on the right show the percentage of rushing or receiving plays (based on targets) the wide receivers accounted for out of the team’s total. It’s sorted by the highest percentage of red zone points to least.
Compared to the running backs, wide receiver red zone points were a lot more spread out as there were just three wideouts with at least 30-percent coming in that area. It’s also not necessarily the biggest receivers on the roster either as Tyler Lockett is one such guy. Just like the running backs though, you can tell who the highest targeted guys on each team are though as they are also typically the ones higher on the percentage list while also being high on the percentage of plays in the red zone they are targeted. Also like the running backs, there are players across the points spectrum throughout the table all the way down to Stefon Diggs who totaled over 200 points last year in a PPR format but was at just four-percent of his points coming in the red zone. Keep in mind that red zone scoring for wide receivers, in general, is less important because in PPR formats because the receiver is getting points for just catching the ball meaning touchdowns aren’t as important to posting double-digit days.
There’s a lot going on in that table huh? Well it shows the 2019 fantasy points posted by the top-30 tight ends and the points they scored inside the 20 and 10 yard lines based on PPR scoring as well as what percentage of their total that was. The two columns on the right show the percentage of rushing or receiving plays (based on targets) the tight ends accounted for out of the team’s total. It’s sorted by the highest percentage of red-zone points to least.
Unlike wide receivers, tight ends are expected to come into play as the team gets closer to the 20-yard line and even more so as they get closer to the goal line. The top-10 tight ends in the above table are all over 25.5-percent of points coming from inside the red zone and Darren Fells tips the scales at nearly 60-percent. What the interesting thing about the top tight ends is though, if you’ll notice in the table, and frankly what sets them apart from others at their position, is that they are at the bottom of the table as in they had some of the lowest percentages of points coming from inside the red zone while being the dominant ones at their positions. That being said though, Travis Kelce does rank as the tight end with the highest target rate of any of the top-30 at nearly 15-percent of the Chiefs' targets last year.
By knowing where the targets and play calling was going in the past seasons we can deduce who will be the targets inside the 20 this coming season based on scheme and personnel. If we know that and we know that nearly three-quarters of all touchdowns scored over the last four years have come from inside the red zone, then we can take better guesses as to who will be the touchdown targets for fantasy football in 2020. Having that piece of knowledge or information is key to really elevating your potential point total each week from average to league winning as touchdowns are the key to really locking down wins in fantasy football.