5 NFL Red Zone Trends to Monitor for Week 4

Is There Something to Julio Jones' Touchdown Woes?

After scoring only 3 touchdowns in 2017 despite finishing tied for 11th in red zone targets (19), Julio Jones looked like a good bet to see a big uptick in scoring in 2018. But through three weeks he has yet to find the end zone, and while a trio of games is hardly enough of a sample to write off the possibility that it's just variance, it's also enough to make it worth taking a deeper look to see if there's real room for concern.

Since Jones came into the league in 2011, 167 players have tallied at least 30 red zone targets. The group as a whole has a touchdown rate (touchdowns per target) of 25.6%. The average touchdown rate in the group is not far off that mark at 25.1%. Jones sits well below both of those marks, ranking 132nd with a 19.2% touchdown rate.

If you want to narrow the sample to the 84 players with at least 50 targets, the group average jumps to 25.6%, and Julio ranks a similarly ugly 70th out of 84. So while Jones' 1 red zone touchdown in 2017 did sit well below the 3.6 we would expect based on his career-average efficiency (i.e. variance burned him a bit), 3.6 is still not a pretty mark, as 42 players had at least 4 red zone receiving touchdowns on the year.

In the short- and even medium-term, I'm not one to lend much credence to something as high-variance as red zone touchdown rate. Over a game, season, or even couple of seasons, that number is just too volatile to be able to use as an expectation level. But with a result as extreme as Julio's over such a long sample, it's worth taking seriously. He's an elite receiver in plenty of facets of the game, but not as a red zone threat. His volume can make up for that, but he's never going to offer elite touchdown upside.

The problem this season is that he hasn't seen the volume to make up for that. He has seen only three red zone targets over three games, sitting tied with Austin Hooper and Calvin Ridley for the team lead.

With Jones' track record of inefficiency, there's no reason for the Atlanta Falcons to start forcing him the ball in scoring range, and even if they do, we should still only expect middling touchdown production.

This doesn't mean that he's not an elite fantasy receiver, as he has proven over his career that he can offer that potential even with modest touchdown numbers, but don't expect a sudden surge in scoring to boost his ceiling.