5 NFL Red Zone Trends to Monitor for Week 6

What Happened in Mark Ingram's Return?

The New Orleans Saints are a team we've been monitoring very closely all season. They're scoring a ton, they're running an absurd number of red zone snaps, and Alvin Kamara had been dominating the touches inside the 20. We knew Mark Ingram's return would have an impact on Kamara's workload, but what was up in the air was how much of an impact that would be. Let's look at what happened in Ingram's first game back.

The Saints matched their season-low with 13 red zone snaps in Monday's game against Washington, so the sample size wasn't quite as big as we have seen for them in some weeks. 13 plays is hardly a small mark in the red zone though -- 13.0 per game would give a team 65 snaps in 5 games, which would rank 4th in the NFL.

New Orleans threw the ball four times while rushing nine times in this game. No player saw more than one target, and only three players saw more than two opportunities. Two of those were Drew Brees (two rushes) and Teddy Bridgewater (three rushes), and the third was Ingram.

Ingram tripled up on Kamara in terms of opportunities, with a 3-1 edge in this game.

That doesn't mean we should write off Kamara. He's not going to continue to be held to a single-digit market share in the red zone. But last season, Ingram saw more work than Kamara in the red zone, and we could easily see that happen again over the remainder of the season.

Both did still rank in the top-15 in opportunity market share last year, though, and with the Saints running by far the most red zone plays in the league, there's plenty of room for the duo to both continue putting up huge touchdown numbers.