We set out to diagnose the Chiefs’ red zone woes. Why our assumptions were wrong

A moment after he secured the football in his arms, Chiefs tight end Noah Gray’s first instinct was to celebrate, pointing his finger toward the sky as he stood in the end zone.

His next? To drop his head.

Because he knew. He saw the yellow cloth. A flag sat behind the line of scrimmage, negating what would have otherwise been his first touchdown of the season.

It came early into the second quarter of KC’s Week 5 game against the Saints , the most recent time the Chiefs have stepped onto the field. But Gray didn’t even have the most telling reaction in the stadium that night.

That came from the sideline.

That came from the frustration not of one single play, but rather a series of them.

A TV camera caught Chiefs coach Andy Reid showing a rare public and demonstrative sign of his irritation: He was literally gritting his teeth as he yelled toward right tackle Jawaan Taylor, the man responsible for the holding penalty. The flag essentially cost the Chiefs four points.

But more to the irritation: It prompted yet another red-zone field goal for a team that has settled for far too many of them. The Chiefs own the NFL’s 29th-best red-zone touchdown percentage this season — a paltry 38.9% of their trips inside the 20-yard line have resulted in seven points.

Even for its hiccups last year or some at the onset of this season, when is the last time the Chiefs’ offense was fourth-worst in football at, well, anything ?

The red zone has been a glaring problem, and a perplexing one. The initial plan for this column was to diagnose that problem.

But a deeper study, including a snap-by-snap analysis, didn’t reveal a trend. Instead, it revealed very much the opposite:

Randomness.

That’s not to be confused with bad luck. The Chiefs own the responsibility for their red-zone issue — or multiple issues. It hasn’t been just one thing.

They’ve had drives stall inside the 20 — on that Taylor penalty, and from the only holding call on center Creed Humphrey this season, and the only penalty of any kind against tight end Travis Kelce this year, and the only penalty called on backup tight end Jared Wiley in his career, and the only drop of the year by wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster.

Only.

Only.

Only.

Only.

How can you predict that?

About a decade ago, Aaron Schatz, now of FTN Fantasy, tried. He looked into the correlation of red-zone success (or failure) as an indicator for future success (or failure).

His conclusion?

“The correlation for red zone advantage is practically nil,” he wrote then. “Red zone advantage has done nothing to project how well a team will play in the red zone during the second half of the year.”

We can slow down on the sweeping conclusions, in other words.

Red-zone touchdown percentage should not be used as some sort of decisive indictment of what the entire Chiefs offense has been — same as it shouldn’t be used as a predictor of where it’s headed.

That’s not to say red-zone touchdown rates aren’t important statistics. They are extremely vital in games. They often determine outcomes. It’s one of the reasons why the Chiefs haven’t topped 27 points in a game this season. One of the reasons they rank just 15th in scoring despite ranking 11th in offensive yards.

It’s massive. It’s just not the massive reflection of this Chiefs offense that it’s been made out to be — or even a massive reflection of whether they’ll have red-zone issues over their final 12 games.

To be sure, the Chiefs’ 2024 numbers are bad, and they are particularly putrid in goal-to-go spots. They have the worst passing offense in the league in terms of expected points added (EPA) in goal-to-go situations.

But the sample size is five plays. Which speaks to red-zone stats more broadly: They’re all small samples.

That’s why this stuff tends to level out — not level out with the rest of the league, but with the success of your own offense.

And the Chiefs are still having some of that.

They punt at the fifth-lowest rate in the league. They are eighth in yards per drive. They are eighth in drive success rate — how frequently they are able to turn a first-and-10 situation into a new set of downs. (All of those numbers are tracked by FTN .)

They are top-5, or at least top-10, in almost every big-picture offensive metric, including one you might not expect: They rank sixth in the league in yards per play on snaps taken in the red zone.

Imagine that.

“I’ve talked about it. If we score in some of these red-zone situations, there (aren’t) as many questions about the offense because we’re scoring more and more points,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said.

Mahomes tried to raise his hand as being part of the problem as the Chiefs inch closer to the end zone, saying he needs “to trust to throw into some of those tighter windows.” Everything gets tight near the goal line, often leaving those throws as a quarterback’s only options.

It’s true that no quarterback takes fewer risks as a passer than Mahomes. Only 7.5% of his passes this season are deemed tight-window throws by Next Gen Stats , by far the fewest in the league.

He’s attempted the first-, second- or third-fewest tight-window throws every year of his career. That’s nothing new. And the Chiefs are trying to draw a little more aggression out of him.

But in this spot?

Eh.

It’s not really the best time to suddenly let it rip. If you’re looking to add some aggression, taking more downfield shots, which prompted a recent “ (bleep) it mentality ” comment from his coaches, is a better risk-versus-reward proposition that squeezing throws in the end zone.

Plus, I went back and tracked every Mahomes pass attempt in the red zone in the first five weeks, including one he referenced in Atlanta, and he had the tiniest of windows to find a receiver for a touchdown.

Simply put: That’s not some end-all, be-all solution to the Chiefs’ red-zone touchdown percentage. It’s a leader pointing the finger at himself.

The actual solution? It’s not one thing. The Chiefs could stand to eliminate the penalties. They could stand to catch the football in the end zone. We could pick at every play.

Or, we could look at the whole picture. How about this for a solution: They could stand to produce like they have outside the 20-yard line.

Which hasn’t been the production of the No. 1 offense in football. That’s not who the Chiefs have been for two years now, in fact.

But it sure is much better than 29th.

And the analysis suggests the Chiefs will be much better than that in the future, too.