5 NFL Red Zone Trends to Monitor for Week 8

Play-Calling Trends

We still have only two teams that have failed to reach the red zone in multiple games this season: the Arizona Cardinals and Jacksonville Jaguars. Each of them have been in the red zone only five times in their seven games. That's not a huge surprise, as they are two of the bottom four offenses in the NFL, by numberFire's metrics.

The Cards' 5.0 red zone snaps per game are also the league's fewest, while the Jags' 6.1 are the fourth-fewest. Between them we have the Miami Dolphins (5.1) and Seattle Seahawks (6.0).

On the other end of things, the New Orleans Saints run over three times as many red zone snaps as the Cardinals, at a league-high 17.0 per game. The only other team that averages at least 15 per game is the Rams at 15.3. The Philadelphia Eagles (12.9) and Kansas City Chiefs (12.6) are the only other teams averaging more than 12.

The league average pass-to-run ratio in the red zone sit at 1.29-to-1, meaning that 56.4% of the plays have been passes.

We have three teams passing at a rate at least 10% below that, in the Buffalo Bills (45.5%), the New York Jets (44.6%) and Washington (42.6%). The Rams just miss that mark, at 46.7%.

There are also four teams passing at least 10% more often than the league average: the Giants (66.7%), Colts (68.0%), Packers (69.1%) and Vikings (70.8%).