Opportunity, Not Conversion: A Field Note on the Red Zone Index in Fantasy Football

Working paper — September 29, 2026
Scoring frame: full PPR, 1.5 tight-end premium, 4-point passing touchdowns
Sample: 2026 NFL Weeks 1–3 (48 games)

Abstract

Fantasy scoring is dominated by touchdowns, yet touchdowns are among the least stable skills in professional football. A decade of applied research has shown that access to the opponent’s 20-yard line is more repeatable than the conversion of that access into six points. The Red Zone Index (RZI) is a proprietary, league-priced measure of that access. Its internals — referred to here only as the RZI secret sauce — are withheld by design. What is published is the output: a 0–100 index of red-zone opportunity quality at the team, position-group, and player levels.

Through three weeks of 2026, the index isolates a small set of structural highs (Detroit’s backfield, Green Bay’s wideouts, New Orleans’ tight ends, Buffalo’s quarterback rushes) and a matching set of structural lows (New England’s trip volume, Pittsburgh’s skill-position drought, Miami’s stalled offense). Those readings sit on a well-documented empirical foundation: most NFL touchdowns still originate in the red zone, conversion rates mean-revert, and yard-line quality is not interchangeable with raw target or carry counts.⁠Sharpfootballanalysis

1. The problem RZI is built to solve

A fantasy roster is a claim on future scoring. Managers routinely buy last year’s touchdowns. The literature says that is the wrong asset.

Across multi-year samples, extreme touchdown totals rarely repeat. In one compilation covering 2011–2023, 81 percent of players with 10 or more rushing or receiving touchdowns scored fewer the next season, with an average drop of 4.9 scores. Among 14-plus touchdown seasons over a later decade, 47 of 49 declined. ESPN-style “regression lists” from 2016–2024 flagged 117 of 130 over-scorers who then receded.⁠Footballnationusa

The mechanism is not mysterious. A carry from the 1-yard line and a carry from the 19 are both “red-zone carries,” but they are not the same play. End-zone target rates have near-zero year-to-year correlation; end-zone target volume is modestly sticky. League-wide, roughly one in four red-zone targets becomes a touchdown; away from the red zone the rate collapses toward one in twenty.⁠Thedatajocks⁠Fantasypoints

RZI prices that distinction without asking the manager to become a play-by-play analyst. It answers a single question: given this league’s scoring, whose current red-zone diet is richest?

2. Historical usefulness of red-zone measurement

The intellectual lineage is public even if the secret sauce is not.

Mike Clay’s opportunity-adjusted touchdowns (oTD), 2013 onward. Clay’s insight was that each down-and-distance state has a league-average scoring probability. Summing those probabilities produces an expected touchdown total that is as predictive of next year’s scores as raw touchdowns, and more stable from season to season. Later expected-touchdown work found year-over-year correlations near 0.60 for expected scores versus 0.52 for actual scores.⁠Pff

Yard-line pricing. Over a decade of PPR data, a target from the 19 has been worth about 1.8 fantasy points; from the 10, about 2.2; from the 5, about 2.8; from the end zone, about 3.0. The same gradient appears in rushing. Inside-the-5 carries are the highest-value running-back opportunities in the sport.⁠Sharpfootballanalysis

Team geography. Since 2010, the share of offensive touchdowns that originate inside the 20 has climbed into the mid-70s. In 2024 it reached 77.2 percent. About 87 percent of rushing touchdowns and two-thirds of passing touchdowns still come from the red zone. Drive-to-red-zone rate is the more stable team trait; red-zone touchdown percentage swings harder year to year.⁠Sharpfootballanalysis

The efficiency trap. Conversion rate is a seductive leaderboard and a poor forecast. Sports Info Solutions documented stretches in which red-zone success fell even as open-field success rose. Field-goal-inclusive “score percentage” can also flatter a unit that reaches the 20 and then stalls. Trip volume, plus the quality of touches once there, is the durable signal.⁠Sportsinfosolutions

Taken together, the historical record supports three operating rules that RZI inherits:

1. Buy opportunity; fade unsustainable conversion.

2. Weight plays by proximity to the goal line, not by a binary “inside-20” dummy.

3. Read the player against the team’s trip volume. A 40 percent share of a four-trip offense is not the same asset as a 40 percent share of a fourteen-trip offense.

3. What RZI is — and what it is not

RZI is a closed model. The RZI secret sauce maps each tracked red-zone event onto expected fantasy points under the league’s exact scoring, then indexes those points to 100 at the current positional leader. A parallel team-group index compares each club’s quarterback, running back, wide receiver, and tight end units to the best group at that position.

What the published tables show:

• Team trips and scores, so managers can see raw access versus finishing.

• Team positional RZI%, so they can see who inside the building is eating that access.

• Player RZI, so they can rank individuals without re-deriving the pricing.

What the tables deliberately do not show: the weights, the shrinkage, or the exact yard-line schedule. Those are the secret sauce. Revealing them would let the index be reverse-engineered and would freeze a model that is meant to be re-estimated as the season thickens.

RZI is not a projection of rest-of-season touchdowns. It describes current opportunity quality. Three-week samples are thin. Confidence bands in the operational workbook flag high/medium/low sample size for that reason. Early leaders can be real roles or one-hot script. The index is built to be re-run weekly, with the 100-anchor reset each time.

A known gap in the present 2026 feed: quarterback rankings lean on red-zone rushes. Pocket pass attempts inside the 20 are not fully captured. Josh Allen’s 100 RZI is therefore a rushing-opportunity statement, not a passing-opportunity statement. Patrick Mahomes’s low quarterback RZI is the same limitation in reverse.

4. 2026 Weeks 1–3: the map

League scoring on red-zone trips (field goals count as scores in the public trip tables) already spans a canyon: San Francisco 90.0 percent, Jacksonville 88.9, New Orleans 81.8 at the top; Tampa Bay 30.0, Miami 28.6, New England 16.7 at the bottom. Kansas City has the most trips (15). Minnesota and Atlanta have converted well on almost no volume (5 trips each). That is the first RZI lesson in miniature: efficiency without trips is a small market.⁠Legionreport

4.1 Team positional highs

Group   Leader RZI% Reading

QB Buffalo 100.0  Allen’s inside-5 rushing diet is the league’s clearest quarterback scoring engine in this feed.

RB Detroit 100.0 Gibbs has absorbed a feature-back red- zone role at historic early volume.

WR Green Bay 100.0 Watson and the Packers’ perimeter group own the richest WR opportunity cluster.

TE New Orleans 100.0 Johnson and Fant have turned Saints trips into the league’s tight-end market.

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Secondary highs worth naming: 

Baltimore’s running-back group (91.7) behind Henry; 

Seattle’s backfield (90.9) even without a quarterback rush signal; 

Kansas City’s backs (87.3) on the league-high trip count; 

Arizona’s tight ends (88.0) on McBride; 

Carolina’s wideouts (95.0) on Coker and McMillan; 

Detroit’s receivers (82.6) on St. Brown.

4.2 Team positional lows

Group Floor cases RZI% Reading

QB  LV, SEA, HOU, NYG, MIA, PIT, ATL, MIN  0.0

No tracked red-zone rushing data. Several of these clubs still throw in scoring range; the index will not pretend otherwise.

RB New England 7.7

Almost no inside-5 work through three games.

WR Atlanta, Houston 0.0

No priced wideout red-zone targets in the tracked set. Baltimore and Pittsburgh are nearly as empty (8.7).

TE Pittsburgh, Minnesota 0.0

No priced tight-end red-zone events. Kansas City and the Chargers sit at 7.9 — a telling gap for two pass-first brands.

The most useful team contrast is not “good offense / bad offense.” It is trip-rich and unfinished versus trip-poor and pretty. 

Green Bay has 12 trips and a 41.7 percent score rate — a WR-index leader sitting on unfinished drives. 

Kansas City has 15 trips and only a 60 percent score rate — a backfield feast that has not fully cashed. 

New England has six trips and one score. No secret sauce turns a barren script into a buy.

4.3 Player highs

Running backs. 

Jahmyr Gibbs (DET) holds RZI 100 on 23 red-zone opportunities. 

Derrick Henry (91.7), 

Kenneth Walker III (87.3), and Ashton Jeanty (83.5) form a second tier of genuine early-season workhorses. 

Christian McCaffrey (58.7) and Jonathan Taylor (57.5) are feature players whose indexes are strong but not yet monopolistic. 

Saquon Barkley at 21.5 is the loudest “role versus brand” gap in the backfield list: the name is elite; the priced red-zone diet through three weeks is not.

Wide receivers. 

Jaxon Smith-Njigba (100.0) and Amon-Ra St. Brown (95.3) are the class.

 Christian Watson (69.8) is the first clear “scheme plus opportunity” riser. Tetairoa McMillan and Jalen Coker are tied at 61.3 — a Carolina pair the raw box score under-sells if one only counts touchdowns. 

Justin Jefferson at 30.2 is the canonical reminder that reputation is not a red-zone share.

Tight ends (1.5 premium). 

Trey McBride (100.0) is the position. Juwan Johnson (77.4), Sam LaPorta (63.7), and George Kittle (59.0) are the investable tier. 

Nate Adkins at 41.0 is a small-sample flare; the index reports it, and the confidence flag should keep it from becoming a season-long thesis.

Quarterbacks (rush-only). 

Allen (100.0), Cam Ward (59.2), Lamar Jackson and Tyler Shough (48.9) lead because they have been used as scorers with their legs. That is informative in a 4-point passing-touchdown league, where a quarterback sneak is priced more richly than a red-zone throw. It is not a complete quarterback ranking.

4.4 Player and team lows that matter

The operational lows are not “bad players.” They are thin diets.

• New England is last in trips and last in score rate. Rhamondre Stevenson’s 7.7 RZI is the player-level photograph of that script.

• Pittsburgh has six trips, a 33.3 percent score rate, and near-zero wideout and tight-end indexes. Jaylen Warren’s 20.6 RZI is the entire skill-position market.

• Miami (28.6 percent, 7 trips) has not generated a passing-game red-zone ecosystem. Achane’s 20.1 is volume without a finishing location.

• Houston’s wideout RZI of 0.0 against 12 team trips is an allocation story: the red zone is being spent on the backfield and the tight ends, not the perimeter.

• Kansas City’s tight-end RZI of 7.9 on a 15-trip offense is the other allocation story. Walker is the red-zone asset; the tight end room is not.

5. How to use the index without worshipping it

RZI is a filter, not a start/sit oracle.

Positive-regression watch. 

High RZI, modest actual scores, stable role. Through three weeks, that profile includes pieces of Green Bay’s unfinished trip pile and Kansas City’s backfield on 15 visits. History says those conditions — not “he is due because he is good” — are the ones that pay.⁠Fantasyowner

Negative-regression watch. Low opportunity and a hot touchdown week. Three games is too small to convict, which is why the secret sauce is re-run rather than locked.

Premium-league distortion. In 1.5 TEP, a tight-end target inside the 10 is one of the most valuable single events in the format. That is why McBride, Johnson, and LaPorta jump receivers with similar raw target counts. A standard-PPR manager who imports these ranks unadjusted will over-weight tight ends. The index is league-priced on purpose.

Team context first. 

Gibbs’s 100 is partly Gibbs and partly Detroit’s 14 trips at a 78.6 percent score rate. 

Barkley’s 21.5 is partly Philadelphia’s nine trips and partly a split with the quarterback. 

Reading the player table without the team positional RZI% is how managers mistake a committee for a feature.

6. Limits

Three games is not a season. 

Red-zone samples shrink faster than box-score samples; a single goal-line package can move a player 20 index points. 

The current quarterback module is incomplete without pass-attempt geography. 

Score percentage in the public team tables includes field goals; RZI’s player layer prices skill-player events, not kickers. Injuries, bye weeks, and midseason role changes will force the 100-anchor to move. That movement is a feature.

I won't publish the secret sauce in this note. The claim is narrower and testable: managers who rank red-zone opportunity quality, priced to their league, will beat managers who rank last week’s touchdowns. The next eleven weeks are the out-of-sample test.

7. Conclusion

Red-zone metrics earned their reputation the slow way. 

Touchdowns regress. 

Drives to the 20 do not regress as fast. 

A target at the 5 is not a target at the 19. 

Expected-touchdown research from Clay onward made that gradient explicit. 

RZI is a closed, weekly implementation of the same idea, tuned to 1.5 tight-end premium and four-point passing scores.

After three weeks of 2026, 

the index’s highs are Gibbs, Henry, Walker, Jeanty; Smith-Njigba and St. Brown; McBride; Allen’s rushes; Detroit’s backs, Green Bay’s wideouts, New Orleans’ tight ends, Buffalo’s quarterback. 

Its lows are New England’s empty script, Pittsburgh’s barren skill groups, Miami’s stalled trips, Houston’s and Atlanta’s missing wideout markets, and several brand-name backs whose priced goal-line work has not matched their draft slot.

The formula stays in the kitchen. The leaderboard is the meal.

Selected sources

Sharp Football Analysis, red-zone scoring and expected-points series (2010–2025 league rates; tight-end and quarterback expectation studies). PFF / Scott Barrett on expected touchdowns versus raw touchdowns. Data Jocks on red-zone target conversion. Fantasy Points on end-zone target stability. Football Nation and related compilations on multi-year touchdown regression. Legion Report / BALLDONTLIE 2026 Weeks 1–3 team trip tables. Operational RZI workbook, 1.5 TEP, Weeks 1–3, 2026.