5 NFL Red Zone Trends to Monitor for Week 1
Play-Calling Trends
The following graph will be familiar to you if you followed my preseason series on players with big touchdown upside for 2018, but it's worth revisiting here, looking at how points scored and red zone snaps correlate:
In short, teams that score a lot tend to run a lot of plays in the red zone, and vice-versa. The correlation isn't perfect, so variance is to be expected every year, but it is strong enough to be very valuable.
If we look at how many red zone plays teams actually ran compared to how many we would have expected them to run (expectation here is based on that correlation and the points they scored on the season), we can highlight some situations where variance was having a big impact on things, skewing numbers in a way that we shouldn't expect them to be in the long run.
So here are the three teams that ran the most red zone snaps above expectation, as well as the team's that fell below expectation by the biggest margin.
| Team | Actual RZ Snaps | Expected RZ Snaps | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Denver Broncos | 151 | 102 | +49 |
| San Francisco 49ers | 161 | 125 | +36 |
| Cleveland Browns | 105 | 73 | +32 |
| Philadelphia Eagles | 154 | 192 | -38 |
| Detroit Lions | 130 | 167 | -37 |
| Kansas City Chiefs | 134 | 170 | -36 |
Situations like this make market share a particularly valuable way of looking at a player's workload. A Denver Broncos player who saw a lot of raw touches but a small market share (like C.J. Anderson, whose 32 opportunities ranked 16th in the NFL, while his 24.1% opportunity market share ranked 24th), loses some of their luster.
Outside of Anderson, there actually weren't many significant discrepancies in Denver though. Demaryius Thomas ranked 18th in target market share while sitting in a four-way tie for 16th in targets, and Emmanuel Sanders ranked outside the top-60 in both.
The San Francisco 49ers followed a similar trend, with now-departed Carlos Hyde seeing more opportunities (carries + targets) than his market share and team performance would have you expect.
One player to be concerned about in the 49ers' passing game is George Kittle, who ranked 20th with 16 targets, while his 18.0% target market share ranked 48th.
On the other side of things, Philadelphia ran far below expectation. Despite this, Zach Ertz and Nelson Agholor tied for 15th in the NFL, with 18 red zone targets each. Their workloads should be quite safe in 2018.
In Kansas City, Kareem Hunt sat top-five, with a 36.7% opportunity market share, but his 47 opportunities were 4 back from fifth place. We should once again see him be one of the busiest red zone back in the league this year.
Of course, we can't just project those numbers forward to the 2018 season. Offenses change, and the number of points those teams score will change. Last year's numbers help us shape projections for 2018 though, and it's valuable to know where variance was having its biggest impact.
For some added context to look ahead with, here is how these teams' 2017 finishes compare with where numberFire's models rank their offenses heading into 2018:
| Team | 2017 Points For Rank | numberFire Offensive Ranking |
|---|---|---|
| Denver Broncos | 27 | 32 |
| San Francisco 49ers | 20 | 9 |
| Cleveland Browns | 32 | 24 |
| Philadelphia Eagles | 3 | 6 |
| Detroit Lions | 7 | 17 |
| Kansas City Chiefs | 6 | 11 |
That's a double-whammy for Denver. They ran above expectation last year and project to be even worse this year, which should cut into their available opportunities in a huge way. The 49ers, on the other hand, are projected for a huge jump, which should go a long way to make up for the difference they saw in 2017.
The Lions' projected drop-off should also make up much of their 2017 difference, balancing things out on that end.
The Chiefs and Eagles both project for drops, but those are small enough that the fact that they ran so far below expectation last year means that we could see a bump in red zone snaps anyway.
