We’re all playing fantasy football for the camaraderie, the fun of it, and of course the cold hard cash you want to win to verify your dominance over those friends and league mates. Having a team that puts up a ton of points is the best way to get the cold hard cash in your hands at the end of the season. How do you get the most points? Getting the most touchdowns on your team. While it is true that predicting touchdowns from year-to-year is a fool’s game to play for a myriad of reasons, however there are some predictors to look at that can give you a leg up heading into draft season and throughout the season.
To put it succinctly, Red Zone scoring is where players make their money. It may as well be called the Green Zone for both real football and fantasy owners alike. But how can the Red Zone hold that much importance in this era of big plays and deep passing games in which highlight real catches rule the day? Well, we just so happen to have the data to back up why you should be paying attention to Red Zone plays and who’s getting the looks inside the 20.
Dating back to the start of the 2016 season, this is what the passing data looks like when you compare overall passing stats to Red Zone stats.
*These tables take into account all passing stats for each of those years regardless of who accounted for them.
The first thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is how predictable things are in the NFL. Between 12.5-13.5-percent of the passing attempts in a season will come inside the 20s and between 6-7.5-percent of passing yards will come in that area of the field as well. If you think about it those number ranges make sense since the Red Zone makes up 20-percent of the field for an offense for the season and they will both run and pass inside it with running plays being more frequent, as you’ll see later, so the mildly limited passing plays make sense when thought about that way. However, we’re in an era of deep pass plays and electrifying passing offenses when quarterbacks routinely go over 5,000 yards and 40 touchdowns in a season, so does it surprise you to see that 68-70-percent of passing touchdowns have come from inside the 20 yard line the last three seasons? Now that’s not to say there aren’t different situations on every team, that’s just a generalization. For instance, and we’ll go with two examples here, Patrick Mahomes threw 50 touchdowns in his MVP-winning 2018 season but 35 of those, or 70 percent, came inside the 20. Meanwhile, his main receiving threat in Tyreek Hill caught 12 touchdowns, five of which were in the Red Zone and three of those were inside the 10. Aaron Rodgers threw 25 touchdowns in 2018, in a down season for him, with 16 of those coming inside the 20, or 64 percent, and his favorite target, Davante Adams , caught 13 of those 25 touchdowns overall with 12 being inside the 20. Both are thought of as big play offenses yet both fit near or inside the range shown the last three years while the receivers added to the quarterbacks totals in two different ways.
Dating back to the start of the 2016 season, this is what the rushing data looks like when you compare overall rushing stats to Red Zone stats.
See I said we’d get to rushing later. Yes, technically rushing attempts aren’t “targets” like the title suggests we’re looking at, but they still matter since we’re in a day and age with split backfields and it’s important to know where the rushing touchdowns are coming from to boost your chances of getting the most on your roster. The bottom line is that about 15-16-percent of rushing attempts in a season come inside the 20s and 10-percent of the rushing yards compiled come in that area too. However, and this isn’t necessarily shocking but, somewhere between 85-88-percent of scores on the ground come from the Red Zone whether it be running backs or quarterbacks taking it in themselves. Even the running backs known for big breakaway runs seldom put those in the endzone on the end of the breakaways. Todd Gurley , Alvin Kamara , Kareem Hunt , Saquon Barkley , and James Conner scored a combined 61 touchdowns last year, but 54 of those came in the Red Zone with Barkley’s four not inside the 20 accounting for most of the difference. With that many touchdowns, even from premier backs coming from inside the 20, it’s important to know who’s getting the goal line and tough yardage carries in each backfield.
All of that said was to answer this, why should you study Red Zone targets and carries? The data clearly shows that the vast majority of scores are scored inside the 20-yard line every year whether it be through the air or on the ground. Winning fantasy football comes down to having the guys on your teams that have big days consistently. Having big days not only means catching a fair amount of passes in general or getting the bulk of the carries and putting up nice yardage games, but also getting into the end zone since that adds six points per score to that guy’s point day in one fell swoop. Those flashy receivers are really nice to have on the team for sure and there are reasons why they go early in drafts to be sure, but if their touchdowns are more big play type catches then a quality look near the end zone, the touchdown totals are hard to count on from year-to-year. Running Backs are a bit of a different story since nearly 90-percent of scores on the ground come from the 20 or closer anyway, but it is still important to see who is getting the Red Zone carries for a team throughout the season and who’s just getting the yards to get them down there. Don’t fret, there will be a future Draft Guide piece about Red Zone Consistency about who exactly produced the most and fewest scores in this area of the field over the past few years, and why. However, just getting a baseline understanding of why it’s important to study these things is key too.