third down

The Question:

via Jane:

Guys lets talk about our favorite third down conversions I'll go first: 3rd and 12, at MSU, to Manningham: https://t.co/ua66YbunqG

— Jane Coaston (@cjane87) June 3, 2016

The Responses:

Adam: Michigan started the 1997 game against Ohio State—you know, the one with a shot at the Rose Bowl and national championship game on the line--with three three-and-outs; a five-play, zero-yard drive; and an eight-play drive that ended in yet another punt. Deep in the second quarter, Michigan was facing 3rd and 12 from their own 47 when Brian Griese hit Charles Woodson on a square-in for 37 yards.

Chris Floyd picked up 15 on the next play to put Michigan at the one-yard line, and Anthony Thomas punched it in one play later for Michigan's only offensive touchdown of The Game. That third-down conversion was one of two Michigan had in a game that came down to the last three minutes; I shudder to think what would happen if Woodson doesn't catch that ball.

[After the JUMP: more things that didn't go bad]

Glanzman

More fun with stats! CFBStats helpfully grabs every play off the NCAA's box scores and turns lines like "Devin Gardner pass complete to Jeremy Gallon for 14 yards" into downloadable data on receiver targeting. Here's where Gardner's passes went last year by down:

Receiver	Target(%)	1st Dn	2nd Dn	3rd Dn
Total passes	395 (n/a)	142	144	105
Jeremy Gallon	137 (35%)	43%	28%	34%
Devin Funchess	92 (23%)	25%	18%	28%
Drew Dileo	30 (8%)	6%	5%	12%
Jake Butt	27 (7%)	3%	13%	4%
Jehu Chesson	24 (6%)	4%	8%	6%
Jeremy Jackson	10 (3%)	3%	3%	1%
Joe Reynolds	7 (2%)	2%	3%	-
A.J. Williams	2 (1%)	-	1%	-
Fitz Toussaint	20 (5%)	4%	8%	3%
Other backs	23 (6%)	6%	6%	6%
[nobody]	23 (6%)	5%	6%	8%

There were four passes on 4th down: two that Funchess converted and two that Dileo didn't. For our purposes I'm going to count them with 3rd downs because they're functionally the same (i.e. not converting is a failure). When every preview this year says defenses will be focused on taking away Funchess, you can see why: most every other target from last year is graduated or not immediately available (Butt). The data also show whether each reception ended up in a 1st down:

Receiver	1st/2nd Dn	Conv%		3rd/4th Dn	Conv%
Jeremy Gallon	45/101	45%		15/36	42%
Devin Funchess	21/61	34%		12/31	39%
Drew Dileo	5/15	33%		7/15	47%
Jake Butt	11/23	48%		2/4	50%
Jehu Chesson	6/18	33%		3/6	50%
Fitz Toussaint	7/17	41%		1/3	33%
Team	105/286	37%		44/109	40%

I don't know if the conversion rate for 1st and 2nd down will be that valuable except as a measure of team dink-and-dunk-iness. The numbers for conversion downs show tendency and success. Again, nothing surprising here. Gallon and Funchess remained equal targets, with Dileo the only other likely 3rd down destination.

Was it common for teams to be so focused on a few guys? Well those 3rd down targeting numbers are high. Gallon was the recipient of just over a third of Michigan's 3rd/4th down attempts; that's 7th in the nation at go-to-guyness. The rest:

Receiver	School	Tm Att	Tgts	Conv %
Alex Amidon	Boston College	106	43 (41%)	42%
Jordan Matthews	Vanderbilt	104	39 (38%)	38%
Shaun Joplin	Bowling Green	114	41 (36%)	49%
Willie Snead	Ball State	131	47 (36%)	55%
Allen Robinson	Penn State	129	46 (36%)	43%
Ryan Grant	Tulane	133	46 (35%)	46%
Jeremy Gallon	Michigan	109	36 (33%)	42%
Ty Montgomery	Stanford	100	33 (33%)	55%
Titus Davis	Central Michigan	98	32 (33%)	56%
Quincy Enunwa	Nebraska	112	36 (32%)	33%

Gallon was as important of a chain-mover for Michigan as A-Rob was to Penn State. What's weird is Michigan's 2nd guy was also really high on the list. Funchess (29% of 3rd/4th down targets, 39% conversion rate) also appears on the national leaderboard, at 19th, right behind Jared Abbrederis.

[After the jump: Michigan was the most obvious team in the country, finding Dileo-like objects, target types.]

Drkboarder's genius.

This 'Merritt's Mention: How much punning has David Merritt had to put up with? Not enough that he balked at calling his fashion-brand-for-a-cause "Merit." The store donates a fifth of its revenues to college scholarships and educational enrichment programs, and he just opened one in Ann Arbor.

We Start Up Front. In 2009 Michigan started off pretty strong, including an encouraging win over Notre Dame. Maybe the shaky backfield got a little beat up for want of a safety or two but hey: Golden Tate and Michael Floyd. Then it got worse. Then it got worser. Then it got awful. And then there were lots of diaries (myself among them) blaming attrition and poor recruiting on the old coaches and all sorts of things that could explain it other than "this is what will get our coaches fired."

So…offensive line diaries.

A Single Unified Theory of Offensive Lineptidute? Provided by Yeoman and bumped early last week, "Short Ride in a Broken-Down Machine" is the definitive study relating Michigan's offensive issues to young starters on the interior OL. As to the small correlation he had a great answer:

At least we're reasonably sure that these problems are temporary. Even if things might get worse next year before they get better, having a pile of Bradens to choose from in 2015-'17 should mean a very good offensive line, unless the coaching is really that terrible.

Given those enormous differences in baseline levels of the various FBS teams it's amazing to me that we could see anything like 5-8% of a performance difference being credited to any one team demographic, especially when the difference is measured using an SOS-adjusted metric like Fremeau.

The rubber really hits the pavement when he thought to compare teams to their historical norm, which is a quite elegant stand-in for expectations (including recruiting). Ultimately he found teams that have significant depth and start freshmen are just fine because the freshmen are just that good, but teams in Michigan's situation typically have very large systemic problems. Because fans tend to overstate, there's a reactionary tendency from the more rational among us to think "it's probably not as bad as it looks." Reality check: it's as bad as if we had Idaho's recruiting problems. Yeoman did throw some hope for next year in the comments:

(1) [OTs Do Matter Theory] The Bust Index for the entire line will improve from 75% to 65%, which would improve oFEI by about .06 and move us (all else being equal which of course it isn't) up about ten spots, or

(2) [OTs Don't Matter Theory] The Bust index for the interior will improve from 69% to 46%, which would improve oFEI by about .175 and move us up about about 20 spots.

He followed up with a Kalis-centric study that tracks every (non-juco) 5-star offensive lineman since 2003 and what contributions that player made in Year X. Findings are the good ones mostly started by Year 2, but that there's no cause to worry until they're not starting in Year 3. Actually the biggest thing to worry about is how few actually make good on their promise, not that Kalis hasn't yet. Diarist of the Month, this guy.

Third Down and Guh. The guy in the running with Yeoman is reshp1, who had a great OL diary two weeks ago, and this week decided to get into all those failed 3rd downs. It's UFR-long, so if you promise to read it (okay if you promise to skim through it) I'll share the money table here. Promise. PROMISE! You know what, fine, I'll put it after the jump, so you still have to click on something you lazy straw man of a dear diary reader.