(NFL RedZone screenshot)

How many times does NFL RedZone whip around from game-to-game? Which Sunday matchups get the most coverage? And do they really show viewers every touchdown? For The Win spent a Sunday on the couch watching nearly seven hours of Scott Hanson’s NFL RedZone to come up with those answers and more. Here’s a look at the important numbers from a Sunday spent with RedZone. 

68 seconds

Over the course of the afternoon, RedZone changed games every 68 seconds on average. That’s a total of 350 cuts in 395 minutes. But there was a pronounced difference between how quickly RedZone whipped around during the crowded 1 p.m. hour and the frequency during the four late games.

Clearly, when there are more games to choose from (eight at 1 p.m.), directors can flip around with more frequency.

42

The amount of times RedZone cut to the 4:25 p.m. ET game between the Ravens and Steelers, the most of any game of the day.

RedZone starts the afternoon with an egalitarian view of the Sunday schedule. Through the third quarter of the early games, every matchup had been seen between 17 and 23 times on the channel. It didn’t matter whether it was the woeful Jaguars or contending Patriots; RedZone gave each broadcast its due. But once the games went into the fourth quarter, RedZone dumped the snoozers to exclusively focus on the five one-score games still on the field.

The Redskins-Bears game was the most frequently aired early game, but didn’t pile on the cut-ins until later in the afternoon. At the outset, even a boring Rams-Panthers game was outpacing the one in Washington, mainly because of one drive in which the Rams were in the red zone for nearly 10 minutes of real time. That led to a number of break-in updates and cutaways from Charlotte, thus upping the total for the game. The Redskins and Bears, on the other hand, got their early scoring on quick TDs that required a single replay. It wasn’t until the game got exciting late that RedZone turned its attention to Landover.

Follow the amazing: A behind the curtain look at DIRECTV’s Red Zone Channel

0

How many times RedZone went to Rams-Panthers and Chargers-Jaguars after 3:25 p.m. ET on Sunday. After most games hit the fourth quarter, Hanson presented “the best 30-45 minutes of the sports week.” From then on, RedZone focused primarily on the five one-score games being played. The stinkers, which received equal time early in the day, were quickly forgotten while RedZone set up the home stretch for the early games.

For a 17-minute stretch at the end of the 1 p.m. window, RedZone only showed the end of the game between the Bears and Redskins and the overtime of Jets- Patriots. The 4 p.m. games had already kicked off, but RedZone ignored those to stick with the two early games until their conclusion.

(USA TODAY Sports Images)

The 4 p.m. schedule doesn’t have the same luxury. Since there were only four games on the slate, RedZone viewers were stuck watching 49ers-Titans and Browns-Packers for long stretches. Early RedZone is fast-paced and frenetic, like the end of Goodfellas. Watching RedZone at 5:15 p.m. can be a slog, like the middle of a more mediocre Scorsese film like, I don’t know, Kundun?

59 seconds

The amount of screen time Hanson got during the games on Sunday. You heard the voice all day, except for a conspicuous four-minute stretch when the network stayed with an uninteresting portion of Falcons-Bucs (a quick bathroom break?), but almost never the man behind it. The lack of vanity is consistent in the way he provides steady narration and excited calls. He’s always about the game of the field and never about himself. Even though the RedZone concept is so perfect, without Hanson and DirecTV’s Andrew Siciliano, it may not have been as popular. They’re as important to the success of their respective channels as fantasy football and short attention spans, combined. And for all his greatness behind the desk — cutting to highlights he hasn’t seen before and flipping between live action like he knows what’s coming — Hanson gets 59 seconds of face time. Fifty-nine! Chris Berman gets that much during Monday Night Football halftime!

Adding the entire telecast — from the time the clock ticked down to kickoff (a great tradition) to the final score in the touchdown montage — RedZone was on air for six hours, 47 minutes. In that time, Hanson had just 127 seconds of airtime. He introduced the games at the top of the show, then was off screen for exactly four hours before briefly returning at 5:02 p.m. while the late games were all on a break. Hanson only made one more appearance before coming back at the end of the show to introduce the montage.

3

The number of punts aired during the 1 p.m. games on Sunday. RedZone loves lots of things (turnovers, sacks, third-down conversion attempts, talking about not showing commercials), but not punts. Of the three from Sunday’s early games, only two were shown live — both late in close games in which field position was crucial. The other one was a replay of Devin Hester taking a Redskins punt to the house.

(USA TODAY Sports Images)

36 of 60 (60%)

The amount of live touchdowns RedZone aired on Sunday compared to the actual number of TDs scored. For as great as RedZone is, there’s no way the crew can know when Captain Munnerlyn is going to pick off a pass and take it back 45 yards for a touchdown, as he did early in the Panthers-Rams game. So when that happened on Sunday, Hanson broke into running coverage of the Jets-Patriots game, showed the Munnerlyn clip, then threw it back to New York. For that reason, a lot of touchdowns are shown on replay. On Sunday, 40% of the touchdowns appeared to air via tape delay.

29 of 36 (81%)

The amount of live field goals aired by RedZone compared to the number of field goals aired. While touchdowns can come out of the blue, there’s no such thing as an unexpected field goal. As such, RedZone showed most kicks live. Not all field goals were shown, however. While the station promises to show you every touchdown, they make no such promises for FGs. A few during the day went unaired, which was just fine.

68, 1, 2, 0

Number of times the double box, triple box, #quadbox and #octobox were shown on Sunday, respectively. The double box is a crucial tool, particularly when two games are coming down to the wire, like Redskins-Bears and Jets-Patriots. Having more than two boxes is cool, but impossible to follow. Not getting a sighting of the #octobox during a Sunday with RedZone is like going to Loch Ness and not catching a glimpse of the monster.

Sadly, this isn’t from Sunday.

0.2

Amount of seconds devoted to commercials. Hanson loves to say “we don’t do commercials here on NFL RedZone” and he means it. With the exception of the briefest glimpse of a CBS ad when the director wasn’t quick enough to change away from one game, there were no commercials on RedZone. Chevy Silverado sponsors part of the program, so there’s an occasional picture of a truck and a flash of the logo, but that’s it.