5 NFL Red Zone Trends to Monitor for Week 1
2017's Red Zone Workhorses
To wrap things up, lets take a quick look at who saw the most red zone work in 2017, sorted by the highest opportunity market share (Opp%).
| Player | Rushes | Targets | Opportunities | Rush% | Target% | Opp% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Le'Veon Bell | 63 | 16 | 79 | 72.4% | 17.2% | 46.9% |
| Melvin Gordon | 49 | 10 | 59 | 73.1% | 14.1% | 42.8% |
| Todd Gurley | 62 | 10 | 72 | 70.5% | 12.2% | 42.4% |
| LeSean McCoy | 36 | 15 | 51 | 57.1% | 23.1% | 39.8% |
| Kareem Hunt | 37 | 10 | 47 | 71.2% | 13.2% | 36.7% |
The first thing that stands out here is that all five players are running backs. Almost every team has their running back dominate their red zone work, with the league's top 24 opportunity market shares from 2017 all belonging to players at the position. Only the Dolphins (Jarvis Landry) and Seahawks (Jimmy Graham) had a non-running back lead them in that category. They were also the only two non-running backs to crack even a 20.0% market share.
While even the biggest target hogs were unlikely to account for even one-third of their team's targets inside the 20 last year (only three players did), rushing work doesn't get spread out nearly as much. Five backs saw at least two-thirds of their team's carries, with another four seeing at least 50%.
Even though teams threw more than they ran inside the 20 last year (the league average pass-to-run ratio was 1.13-to-1), the concentration of the rushing work keeps running backs as the top dogs in the red zone.
It's also worth noting that workhorses in the red zone are generally the same players that are workhorses overall. Eight backs saw at least a 33.3% opportunity market share in the red zone, and that group included the backs that ranked 1st through 6th in rush attempts on the season, with the other two having finished 11th and 14th.
Not all high-volume backs get high-volume red zone carries (Leonard Fournette ranked 24th in opportunity market share despite ranking 7th in carries), but if you're expecting red zone volume to give a huge boost to a low-volume player, you're likely going to end up disappointed.
Those numbers and trends come at a macro level though. Team-to-team and week-to-week, we could see differences, either in how a team plays a certain matchup, or whether injuries could be giving someone a boost. That makes it even more valuable to stay on top of who is trending up on any given week.
