dogorama
New member
If you have been listening to the various Seahawks press conferences this week you probably heard Coach Carroll mention that they need to convert more 3rd downs. In Russell Wilson's press conference he echoed that. This reminded me of something I had been thinking about but first, let's look at what our conversion rates actually are. The first is an admittedly small sampling from this year but the other three are full year's rates.
Year Percent Rank
2016 31.03% 25th
2015 45.80% 3rd
2014 43.57% 8th
2013 37.07% 18th
Notice something peculiar? That's right, in our best year of the last three we were 18th and in our worst year we were 3rd. Does that surprise you? Well, it shouldn't because it brings up something that is critical to sustaining drives and something I have been pondering w/our current offense. If you run 1st and 2nd down or throw short bubble screens and depend on converting 3rd downs you will fail, period. You must incorporate enough 1st down plays on 1st and 2nd down to sustain drives and score.
I averaged the highest ranked 3rd down conversion rates for the last three years and the average highest rate is 48.01%. So, even if you are the best in the league you are only converting 48% of your first downs on 3rd down. The reason we were converting less 3rd downs in 2013 is because we were converting more 1st downs on 1st and 2nd down and/or more explosive plays. The problem this year is we aren't converting at a decent rate on any down. I am not saying that we don't try to do that now, but we are obviously not very good at it, and we have become worse at it for three consecutive years.
You could say that we scored more pts in 2015 and that accounted for that but we scored almost identical pts in '13 with 26.4 and 26.1 pts respectively. Stats don't tell the whole story but often they can aid in discovering patterns.
I am sure there is more than one way to interpret these stats so feel free to add yours.
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/t ... ersion-pct
http://www.espn.com/nfl/statistics/team ... /year/2013
Year Percent Rank
2016 31.03% 25th
2015 45.80% 3rd
2014 43.57% 8th
2013 37.07% 18th
Notice something peculiar? That's right, in our best year of the last three we were 18th and in our worst year we were 3rd. Does that surprise you? Well, it shouldn't because it brings up something that is critical to sustaining drives and something I have been pondering w/our current offense. If you run 1st and 2nd down or throw short bubble screens and depend on converting 3rd downs you will fail, period. You must incorporate enough 1st down plays on 1st and 2nd down to sustain drives and score.
I averaged the highest ranked 3rd down conversion rates for the last three years and the average highest rate is 48.01%. So, even if you are the best in the league you are only converting 48% of your first downs on 3rd down. The reason we were converting less 3rd downs in 2013 is because we were converting more 1st downs on 1st and 2nd down and/or more explosive plays. The problem this year is we aren't converting at a decent rate on any down. I am not saying that we don't try to do that now, but we are obviously not very good at it, and we have become worse at it for three consecutive years.
You could say that we scored more pts in 2015 and that accounted for that but we scored almost identical pts in '13 with 26.4 and 26.1 pts respectively. Stats don't tell the whole story but often they can aid in discovering patterns.
I am sure there is more than one way to interpret these stats so feel free to add yours.
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/t ... ersion-pct
http://www.espn.com/nfl/statistics/team ... /year/2013