5 NFL Red Zone Trends to Monitor for Week 4

Play-Calling Trends

Three weeks into the season, team's red zone samples continue to increase, giving us better and better data for play-calling tendencies. Except for the Arizona Cardinals. They have still only reached the red zone in one of their three games. Only one other team (Jacksonville, two games) has not run a red zone snap in all three weeks of the 2018 season.

As I mentioned earlier, the Saints' 54 plays are the most of any team. The next three spots on the list are occupied by the Los Angeles Rams (50), San Francisco 49ers (41) and Philadelphia Eagles (38), before we get into a three-way tie for fifth.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Cardinals' eight red zone snaps are, surprise, the fewest in the league. The next-lowest marks belong to the Minnesota Vikings and Seattle Seahawks (14 each), the Jacksonville Jaguars (15) and the Dallas Cowboys (16).

Scoring is heavily correlated with the number of red zone snaps a team runs, so depending on how you want to look at it, some teams should be in for either a big shift in red zone snaps or scoring moving forward. The Eagles are the top candidate for regression, ranking fourth in red zone snaps but 24th in points for. The Houston Texans (5th in red zone snaps, 23rd in points for) are in a similar boat.

Looking at play-calling tendencies, there are 6 teams that have called passes on at least 70% of their red zone snaps. That list is made up of the Pittsburgh Steelers (80.0%), Detroit Lions (77.8%), Green Bay Packers (76.1%), Arizona Cardinals (75.0%), Seattle Seahawks (71.4%) and the Indianapolis Colts (70.2%).

On the other end of the spectrum, there are three teams who have run on at least 60% of their snaps, the New York Jets (65.2%), Cleveland Browns (61.1%) and Philadelphia Eagles (60.1%).