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Last week, someone mentioned that they would like to see red zone defensive statistics for the Atlanta Falcons in addition to my weekly roundup, so we'll get to that first.
First of all, according to my laser-like calculations, the Falcons are converting almost 86% of their red zone opportunities, as long as you count field goals. Field goals account for 30% of that total. If we remove those entirely (the extremely masculine view that field goals are for sissies and pinko communists), we'd see the Falcons converting approximately 55% of their chances. While both of those are fairly robust totals, they pale in comparison to teams like the Indianapolis Colts, who convert well over 90% of their chances overall and nearly 70% in the form of touchdowns. It hasn't helped, of course, that our effectiveness inside the 20 has been declining in recent weeks due to injuries and other such infirmaries. And, you know, it is a pretty small sample size.
But you came here for the defense, and I shall deliver. Again, if you account for field goals and factor them in equally with touchdowns, opponents are converting against us at an almost 83% clip, or just slightly worse than the rate at which we're converting against them. They're 3% behind us in a touchdown-only red zone conversion rate, as well, at about 52%.
Can you draw any important conclusions from those numbers? Nothing more than we've ever tried to do with this particular feature, but it's interesting nonetheless. And as for the last week? Somehow we only got in the red zone twice—which might explain the low point total—and converted on a field goal and touchdown. Now if we could only get there a little more often....