Falcons coordinator Kyle Shanahan hasn’t found a consistent thread as to why his offenses have finished in the lower half of the league in red zone efficiency in six of eight seasons.
Last season, the Falcons finished 18th with a redzone (touchdowns only) efficiency of 54.72 percent.
“Every year is different,” Shanahan said. “When you look at ours this year, I think there were a couple of things. When you are 18th overall in red zone offense and you’re 32nd in red zone turnovers, that’s saying a lot.
“Usually, if you’re 32nd in red zone turnovers you’re usually at the bottom five in red zone offense. To be in the middle of the pack with a lot of turnovers, just looking at stats like that….it’s stop turning the ball over and we’ll do a lot better.”
The Falcons started off strong in the red zone. It was an unsustainable pace.
“At the beginning of the year, we ran the ball extremely well inside the 10,” Shanahan said. “I want to say the first 12 times inside the 10 we scored on 11 of them, touchdowns and it was off run plays. The only time we didn’t was the first time we were down there against Philly and we had a pick on second-and-goal.”
After the hot start the running game got stuffed in the redzone.
“Once start we struggling to run the ball more, you get a lot of four-man rushes and you’ve got seven guys in the end zone, usually against four guys on a route and it gets congested,” Shanahan said.”
The Falcons have a plan to ramp up their red zone attack in 2016.
“Start with turnovers, the next thing is whenever you run the ball well down there points usually happen for everybody,” Shanahan said.
SHANAHAN’S RED ZONE NUMBERS 2008-14
Year — Rank — Percentage — Team
2008 – 26th – 45.90 – Houston
2009 – 12th – 52.38 – Houston
2010 – 19th – 51.16 – Washington
2011 – 29th – 41.18 – Washington
2012 – 4th – 60.38 – Washington
2013 – 20th (tied) – 52 – Washington
2014 – 24th – 48.99 – Cleveland
2015 - 18th – 54.72 – Atlanta
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