Kliff Kingsbury’s offense should help Arizona Cardinals red zone woes

The Arizona Cardinals red zone offense in 2018 was in one word…offensive

With an offense lead by Arizona Cardinals new head coach Kliff Kingsbury, results should be different than what fans saw in 2018.  It may take some time to all come together as we all want but one area the hopefully comes together quick is the red zone offense.

In 2018, Arizona Cardinals quarterbacks were 22-50 with just eight touchdowns in red zone passing attempts.  Josh Rosen had most of those attempts going 16-38 and seven touchdowns.

Sam Bradford and Mike Glennon each went 3-6 with Glennon throwing one touchdown in the red zone.  All three are now gone giving way to Kyler Murray and Brett Hundley.

The top two in the red zone were Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck.  Mahomes went 66-103 in the red zone with 35 touchdowns.  Luck went 67-100 with 33 touchdowns.

We may not see those kinds of numbers by Murray in the red zone in 2019 but there is now reason why we shouldn’t see much better numbers than 2018 with the Air Raid offense. It will all be a matter of Murray and his receivers believing in the system and executing.

Kingsbury knows a thing or two about scoring in the red zone.  His Texas Tech team scored 51 times out of 58 opportunities last season.

Overall the Cardinals scored 64 percent of the time in the red zone, which was good for ninth percentage-wise in the NFL.  So clearly they were better at getting the ball in the end zone via the ground attack.

Running back David Johnson had seven touchdowns inside the red zone in 2018.  All of those scores were from inside the 10-yard line. It was the number of opportunities they got which was concerning.

The Cardinals were dead last in the NFL with number of red zone scoring attempts with 1.8 per game.  There was one game where the Cardinals didn’t even move the offense over the 50-yard line until very late in the game, the road contest at the Los Angeles Rams.

Kingsbury was hired to get the Cardinals offense re-started.  They should not only have more long scoring plays but more importantly get themselves into scoring position inside the 20 more often.  You can’t win if you don’t score, much less even get the opportunity to.