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.
3 != 4
It’d be a different stat. Call it ‘drive continuation rate (DCR) or punt avoidance rate (PAR) or Adjusted 3rd down rate is ok too
Because 3rd down and 4th down are two different downs
But nobody actually cares about a team’s 3rd down conversion rate.
This is where ya lost me bud. It’s a pretty important stat.
Hey OP do you have the stat for 3rd down conversion on defense?
Because every team goes it for every time on 3rd down. They don’t tend to do that on 4th.
This is illogical. 3rd down’s are attempted, regardless of the situation, throughout the game in all areas of the field.
4th downs are highly situational and rarely attempted. Several teams have 10 or fewer 4th down attempts all year so far.
The Chiefs have seven 4th down attempts on the season, it’s makes zero sense to adjust their 3rd down rate like that.
This is doing way to much with numbers.
Why don’t they count 4th on 1st or 2nd down by that logic?
Guy tried his best to present some new ideas and way of looking at teams staying on the field, and r/NFL just gonna shit all over it. Color me surprised
nobody actually cares about a team’s 3rd down conversion rate
Disagree wholeheartedly. The success on third down takes away either having to kick it or having to take a huge risk going for it on 4th down. The success rate of third down conversions is very important and should be tallied as it is now.
Using your argument, 2nd down conversion rate is more important, because it doesn’t put you in a situation where you have to get it or make a decision.
Nope. Huge difference between 3rd down situation and 4th down situation. That logic doesn’t follow.
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.
By this logic, just count every first down gained regardless of what down it was before.
4th downs tend to be attempted either in desperation or in high probability to convert situations. Both cases skew the numbers in a misleading way. 4th down conversion attempts also offer a relatively low sample size. You shouldn’t get a ton of praise for converting that 4th and 1 or 2. Every team should be able to very consistently gain 2 yards. And failing to convert 4th and long in the final 2 minutes when you’re losing shouldn’t be held against you.
Barring an end of half FG attempt, teams go for it on 3rd down 100% of the time. For obvious reason. And for 99% of the game, teams operate as if they have 3 downs to gain 10 yards, not 4. If you consistently convert 3rd downs because you consistently have a shorter way to go, that is a very good sign for your offense. If you are constantly facing 3rd and longs, and struggle converting because of it, that is a very bad sign for the offense.
Tldr, 3rd downs, thanks to overall strategy/situation as well as sample size are much more indicative of a good offense than 4th downs.
I’m sorry OP. This is a great stat, you just presented it wrong, gave the mouth breathers ammo to make their snarky comments based off two sentences and leave.
Another commenter mentioned naming it Drive Continuation Rate, presented as that, I think it would be received better.
You could also include field position, and impact of failures, but that’s essentially recreating EPA/play lol.
I’m actually curious how well this data lines up versus success rate and EPA/p, should correlate pretty well as it makes up individual components of both.
Especially since play callers will intentionally set up a 3rd down play call for 3-4 yards to open up the play book for the already decided go-for-it decision & not the first down.
I’ll tell you why we don’t do this and why it is flawed, using my Team. The Chiefs have only gone for 7 4th downs all year I believe, being 3/7. 4 of those were desperation 4th downs in the broncos/lions game when we were down multiple scores, so it doesn’t really give a good representation. Two of them I remember were 4th and 25 or more.
Maybe you could Weight this as there’s a lot more 3rd down attempts than 4th down, or take out desperation 4th downs in the 4th quarter when losing over like 5-10 yards. I dunno.
Also I’m really annoyed how conservative Andy is being this year with the offense. They only have 3 4th down attempts this season that weren’t because they’re losing in the 4th and have to. This is part of why the offense looks worse, is we’ve punted or kicked field goals on about 20 4th and shorts this season, a lot of them inside the 10.
three 4th down attempts in 9 games with the best QB in the NFL, just dumb. (that’s all my complaining, we’re awesome)
“Nobody actually cares about a teams 3rd down conversion rate.”
It’s going to be a loooong time before any of us hear or read something that’s going to beat this. Wow.
Pain