NFL

5 NFL Red Zone Trends to Monitor for Week 5

Use your ← → (arrow) keys to browse the slideshow

Mark Ingram's Return for New Orleans

The New Orleans Saints are a team worth addressing every week in this article, because they continue to put up absolutely absurd red zone numbers.

In Week 3 alone they ran more red zone snaps than nearly half the league had run in the first three weeks combined, and while they cooled off slightly in Week 4, they still ran a league-high 20 red zone plays. That puts them up to 74 on the season -- 14 more than any other team. Their 18.5 red zone plays per game are nearly double the league-average, which sits at about 9.5.

And as usual, Alvin Kamara leads the way. His eight red zone opportunities (carries plus targets) were the most in the NFL in Week 4 -- meaning he has led the league in three of the four weeks this season.

He has 35 opportunities, which blows out the next-best mark of 26 (which belongs to Todd Gurley), and especially the third-ranked mark of 18 (Marshawn Lynch). Kamara is tied for the league lead in red zone rushes (20) and sits alone in the lead for red zone targets (15).

This has elevated Kamara to some big scoring numbers (five rushing and one receiving touchdown), but there's a chance he starts to come back down to earth with Mark Ingram returning from suspension in Week 5.

We can already expect some regression in terms of the number of red zone opportunities available in New Orleans, as they're highly unlikely to keep running north of 18 red zone snaps per game. The highest mark in the NFL last year was only 12.5 per game, and while it was slightly higher in 2016, the league-best was still only 12.9 per game.

If Kamara were to keep up his 50% market share of the team's opportunities, that regression wouldn't hurt too much. Based on what we saw in 2017, though, that's not too likely.

The Saints did feed Kamara the ball in the red zone last year, and he ranked 14th in the NFL in opportunity market share, but that was with a mark of 27.5%. Ingram actually saw more work, with a 29.4% market share that ranked 11th.

Standing to see his market share drop by nearly half while the total number of opportunities available is also likely to fall, Kamara's touchdown upside is going to take a big hit. This doesn't mean he's not going to continue to be a top-end fantasy scorer, but it does limit his ceiling relative to what we've seen in these first four weeks.

This also means that Ingram, if he returns to his usual workload right away, will return to offering the big touchdown upside we saw from him last year, when he found the end zone a career-high 12 times.