sip-em_bears

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1
[OC] Introducing Drive Continuation Rate (alien.top)
 

First of all, I want to credit u/NBC7x for coming up with the name. I made a post last week about this concept, but I'm reintroducing it here from a different point of view.

Have you ever watched a game where a team seems to purposefully run a "bad" play on 3rd down that leaves them just short of getting a 1st down? Well sometimes, it's simply poor play calling or poor execution. But more often now than ever, teams call 3rd down like they do 2nd down, knowing they'll go for it on 4th if they are close enough.

So what I came up with is called the Drive Continuation Rate (DCR). I've just added a team's successful 4th down conversions to their 3rd down conversions, the divided by their 3rd down attempts. Here's where every team ranks:

Rank Team 3DAtt 3DConv 4DConv DCR
1 Philadelphia Eagles 137 66 13 57.7%
2 Buffalo Bills 133 64 6 52.6%
3 Dallas Cowboys 141 66 7 51.8%
4 Detroit Lions 137 58 12 51.1%
5 Green Bay Packers 138 60 10 50.7%
6 Minnesota Vikings 150 62 14 50.7%
7 Los Angeles Chargers 139 60 10 50.4%
8 Kansas City Chiefs 129 59 5 49.6%
9 Chicago Bears 146 63 9 49.3%
10 San Francisco 49ers 106 47 4 48.1%
11 Houston Texans 137 60 5 47.4%
12 Baltimore Ravens 139 62 3 46.8%
13 Carolina Panthers 145 54 13 46.2%
14 Los Angeles Rams 135 55 7 45.9%
15 Atlanta Falcons 140 58 6 45.7%
16 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 138 56 7 45.7%
17 Indianapolis Colts 143 56 8 44.8%
18 Miami Dolphins 107 41 5 43.0%
19 Washington Commanders 142 53 8 43.0%
20 New Orleans Saints 148 54 8 41.9%
21 Denver Broncos 123 47 4 41.5%
22 Jacksonville Jaguars 131 46 7 40.5%
23 Las Vegas Raiders 132 43 10 40.2%
24 Arizona Cardinals 136 48 6 39.7%
25 Cincinnati Bengals 129 46 5 39.5%
26 Tennessee Titans 121 40 6 38.0%
27 New England Patriots 132 45 5 37.9%
28 New York Giants 165 51 11 37.6%
29 Pittsburgh Steelers 136 47 4 37.5%
30 Cleveland Browns 153 50 7 37.3%
31 Seattle Seahawks 123 39 6 36.6%
32 New York Jets 131 30 10 30.5%

So if a team failed on 3rd down, but then was successful on 4th, I'm counting that as a successful drive continuation attempt. However, if a team failed on 3rd down, then failed on their 4th down attempt (or didn't go for it all), I'm counting that as a failed drive continuation attempt.

I know this doesn't account for every situation. For example, a team down 1 point with 20 seconds left and the ball on their opponents 10 yard line will likely "fail" on 3rd down by simply running to the preferred hashmark of their kicker and then make a game winning kick as time expires. In this specific scenario, I've counted that as a failed drive continuation attempt for a team that executed a game winning play.

For the most part though, this gives you a good overall look at how good/bad teams are at keeping drives alive on the final play of a set of downs where they plan on turning the ball over to the other team if their play is not successful.

1
[OC] Why don't we include 4th down conversions when looking at a team's 3rd down conversion rate? (alien.top)
 

The obvious answer to the title is that 3rd down conversion rate should only look at what a team actually did on 3rd down. But nobody actually cares about a team's 3rd down conversion rate. What people are really talking about when looking at that stat is how often can an offense keep the drive alive for another set of downs.

Below is my attempt at ranking every team by their adjusted 3rd down conversion rate. All I did was simply add a team's 4th down conversions to their 3rd down conversions, then recalculated their 3rd down conversion rate.

Team 3D% 3D% Rank Adj3D% Adj3D% Rank
Philadelphia Eagles 50.0% 1 60.3% 1
Buffalo Bills 49.2% 2 53.3% 2
Dallas Cowboys 47.2% 3 52.8% 3
Green Bay Packers 42.7% 8 50.8% 4
Los Angeles Chargers 42.4% 9 50.4% 5
Minnesota Vikings 41.5% 11 49.6% 6
Detroit Lions 39.7% 15 49.2% 7
San Francisco 49ers 44.8% 5 49.0% 8
Chicago Bears 43.6% 7 48.9% 9
Kansas City Chiefs 45.5% 4 48.2% 10
Los Angeles Rams 42.1% 10 47.6% 11
Baltimore Ravens 44.1% 6 46.5% 12
Atlanta Falcons 41.4% 12 45.7% 13
Carolina Panthers 37.7% 19 45.4% 14
Houston Texans 41.1% 13 45.2% 15
Miami Dolphins 39.6% 16 44.8% 16
Indianapolis Colts 39.2% 18 44.8% 17
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 39.5% 17 44.4% 18
Denver Broncos 40.5% 14 43.2% 19
Washington Commanders 37.2% 21 42.6% 20
New Orleans Saints 36.5% 22 41.9% 21
Las Vegas Raiders 33.1% 29 41.5% 22
Cincinnati Bengals 37.3% 20 40.7% 23
Arizona Cardinals 35.7% 24 39.7% 24
Jacksonville Jaguars 35.3% 25 38.7% 25
Pittsburgh Steelers 36.1% 23 38.5% 26
Cleveland Browns 33.8% 27 38.2% 27
New England Patriots 34.1% 26 37.9% 28
New York Giants 30.5% 31 37.7% 29
Tennessee Titans 33.3% 28 37.7% 30
Seattle Seahawks 31.5% 30 35.2% 31
New York Jets 25.0% 32 30.0% 32

Not too big of a surprise at the top and bottom. The Eagles, Bills, and Cowboys are great at getting a fresh set of downs and the Jets are awful at doing so.

But there are some interesting results in the middle. The Lions for example are only 15th in 3rd down conversion rate, but when you account for how many times they are then able to convert on 4th down, they are 7th in keeping drives alive.

The Chiefs on the other hand are 4th in pure 3rd down conversions, but have only converted 3 4th down attempts all season dropping them to 10th in adjusted 3rd down rate.

Alvin Kamara and Christian McCaffrey have had virtually identical production in their careers. in c/nfl@nfl.community
[โ€“] sip-em_bears@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

2019 is a great example of how dominate this RB class was. That season, 14 RBs had at least 1,300 yards from scrimmage. 8 were from this draft class (McCaffrey, Fournette, Cook, Jones, Ekeler, Carson, Mixon, Kamara). That list doesn't even include Kareem Hunt who led the league in rushing yards their rookie year. Just crazy depth for a single class.

Alvin Kamara and Christian McCaffrey have had virtually identical production in their careers. in c/nfl@nfl.community
[โ€“] sip-em_bears@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kamara is behind in receptions. With 3 more catches in this Saints offense, he could have like 1 more receiving yard.

1
Alvin Kamara and Christian McCaffrey have had virtually identical production in their careers. (alien.top)
 

I was skimming through pro football reference yesterday, and was looking at Kamara and CMC's career stats. They have essentially had the exact same production in their careers.

Player Carries Rush Yards Receptions Receiving Yards Touches Scrimmage Yards TDs
Alvin Kamara 1,204 5,396 465 3,930 1,669 9,326 72
Christian McCaffrey 1,150 5,324 468 3,984 1,618 9,308 71
Difference 54 72 3 54 51 18 1

Both were drafted in 2017. Kamara has played in a few more games, but they have still had almost the same amount of carries and receptions. McCaffrey gets slightly more work on a per game basis, but maybe that's contributed to him missing more time due to injury as well.

Overall though, it's kinda crazy that after 6.5 seasons, two elite RBs from the same draft class are only separated by 18 scrimmage yards and 1 touchdown.

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Alvin Kamara is on pace for 123 receptions this year. The NFL record for a running back is 116. (alien.top)
 

In 2016, Christian McCaffrey set the single season record for receptions by a running back with 116 catches.

Alvin Kamara has 35 receptions through 4 games this year (8.75 receptions per game). If he were to maintain his current pace for the Saints' remaining 10 games, he'd finish with 123 catches.