Red Zone Woes

[wolfkaosaun]

Inside the red zone, it's no surprise that the Bengals have struggled inside the red zone. You watch the games, you can tell. But just how bad are they?

Well, currently they rank 29th in the league with scoring a TD in the red zone with a percentage of 30.77%. To make it worse, on the road they have a percentage of 16.67%. Home isn't much better with a ranking of 42.86%. Which would rank them 21st in the NFL.

In comparison, the Bengals were tied for 5th in the league with 65%.

So let's take a deeper look at the team.

Inside the 10 yard line, the Bengals have only run with Hill. They've ran 5 times with him for a total of 3 yards inside the 10.

Inside the 10 yard line, the Bengals have passed the ball 6 times for one completion. Uzomah has been targeted twice. Boyd targeted once. LaFell targeted once. And Green targeted once. Along with one throw away. Green is the only one to catch a pass inside the 10, and he did that last night.

But let's look at the packages that the Bengals have done with running situations. On EVERY single run inside the 10 yard line, they've used multiple offensive lineman. And on 2 of Dalton's 6 throws have come out of the same formation.

So what does this mean? It's predictable. Multiple offensive lineman? Stack the box and have someone on Uzomah. Because that's the first read and a lot of Zampese's passing offense is first read.

The other 4 throws? One was a TD to Green in a normal formation. LaFell was barely out of bounds on one throw. One was a throw away. And the other was that drop/deflection to Boyd last night.

Zampese's red zone offense is one of the worst in the league. And it has no reason to be. You have some very good players, but inside the red zone gets very predictable. They've had 6 or more offensive lineman on 7 of their 11 tries inside the 10 yard line. Sure, they've scored 3 total TDs inside the 10 (2 for Hill, 1 for Green). But that's it. This team has too much talent to be that predictable inside the red zone.