Some charts based on the red zone scoring numbers I posted. Trigger warning: Texas is going to be the worst in a lot of these metrics.
This first one is essentially the premise for going for it instead of taking the FG in the red zone, and completely unsurprising. Points per red zone attempt by red zone td %.
The more often you score a td when you’re in the red zone the more points you score. Shocking, right? Texas is really bad at this. 54th in FBS at scoring TDs once they get in the red zone.
But what about when you don’t score a TD? This next one is points per red zone attempt vs points per red zone attempt that didn’t result in a TD.
Inversely, points per red zone attempt by the percentage of times that you come away with nothing.
Again, unsurprising that coming away with nothing is bad and Texas came away with nothing the most. 111th in FBS in scoring % in the red zone.
And points per red zone attempt by the percentage of times that a team attempted to kick a field goal instead of going for it on 4th down.
At this point I was pretty strongly in the camp of taking the points vs going for it on 4th down. So what would it look like if they took the field goal as much as the highest of these teams. Same chart, bumping Texas to taking the field goal 72% of the time.
Only from 4.98 points per red zone attempt to 5.24.
They would only have to increase their red zone td% from their actual 64% to 68% to achieve the same result. That’s moving from 54th in fbs to 38th.
What if they kicked and made the FG 100% of the time? That would increase points per red zone attempt to 5.55, still below average for the group. They’d need to increase their TD % from 64% to 72% to achieve the same result, 14th in fbs, 4th of these 8 teams.
So the problem isn’t in the decision to go for it. It’s the inability to score TDs in the red zone.
For comparison, 2023 was even worse in red zone td %. 120th in FBS in red zone td%. They the field goal more often, came away with nothing less often, scored more points on drives that didn’t result in a TD, but still score half a point less per red zone attempt.
What’s mind bottling is how a team with this level of talent is underperforming so badly once they get in the red zone.
Edit to add, not only is Texas bad at converting red zone opportunities into TDs, because they are so aggressive in going for it, they compound the problem and end up worse than the peer group in all of the other red zone metrics.