DOWNS AND SUCCESS: A FURTHER LOOK            

After not finding as much as I thought I would in the initial delve into this subject, a few suggestions from other MGoBlogger and some folks on Twitter proved to be rather enlightening (thanks to Tenn Blue and jamiemac in particular). I was taking an incomplete approach to this subject, and in some respects, one that might be a little too broad to find much.

So, I limited this to 3^rddowns because that is where some of the better relationships seem to be, and then I calculated both the conversion rate on offense and the conversion percentage on defense for each team. Next, I subtracted the defensive success rate from the offensive success rate to get a differential for each team and each year evaluated. I also took the suggestion to correlate this to certain aspects of scoring offense – for this run, I chose average points per game.

The R-value for the relationship between the differential and win percentage turns out to be 0.752, which is not bad at all. The R-value for the relationship between the same differential and average points per game came out to 0.659, so while not as good, the two share at least a casual relationship, as you will be able to see in the graphs below.

A FEW HIGHLIGHTS REGARDING THIRD DOWNS:

So, what did some of the better teams from the Big Ten (I included Rutgers and Maryland in here for kicks) look like when it came to success on getting conversions, stopping them on defense and winning?

The best ten from the Big Ten data set:

Year	Name	DEFENSE PCT	OFFENSE PCT	DIFFERENTIAL (OFFENSE-DEFENSE)	Win. Pct
2008	Penn St.	32.26%	52.02%	19.77%	0.846
2005	Ohio St.	30.86%	49.36%	18.50%	0.833
2009	Penn St.	31.77%	48.35%	16.58%	0.846
2011	Wisconsin	38.22%	54.71%	16.49%	0.786
2006	Ohio St.	32.95%	49.06%	16.10%	0.923
2010	Ohio St.	30.18%	46.20%	16.02%	0.923
2012	Michigan	35.96%	50.29%	14.33%	0.615
2008	Nebraska	33.73%	47.19%	13.46%	0.692
2006	Wisconsin	28.18%	41.42%	13.24%	0.923
2007	Ohio St.	33.33%	45.90%	12.57%	0.846

 

And to follow, the worst ten:

Year	Name	DEFENSE PCT	OFFENSE PCT	DIFFERENTIAL (OFFENSE-DEFENSE)	Win. Pct
2008	Indiana	46.78%	27.65%	-19.14%	0.250
2011	Maryland	53.76%	35.84%	-17.93%	0.167
2005	Illinois	50.67%	37.57%	-13.09%	0.182
2006	Minnesota	48.81%	36.75%	-12.06%	0.462
2008	Michigan	38.78%	27.27%	-11.50%	0.250
2010	Purdue	43.03%	32.22%	-10.81%	0.333
2009	Minnesota	44.39%	34.08%	-10.31%	0.462
2011	Indiana	49.39%	40.82%	-8.57%	0.083
2009	Indiana	47.50%	39.08%	-8.42%	0.333
2006	Indiana	41.94%	33.53%	-8.40%	0.417

 

You’ll note that Michigan has one representative in each of these tables of extremes.

Here is a general table which shows you what the average differential was in various ranges of win percentage.

 

WIN PCT.	AVG. DIFFERENTIAL
0.800 OR BETTER	11.60%
0.799 TO 0.700	8.36%
0.699 TO 0.600	5.11%
0.599 TO 0.500	2.49%
0.499 TO 0.400	-2.03%
0.399 TO O.300	-3.86%
0.299 OR WORSE	-7.86%

 

THE POINTS PER GAME ANGLE:

I actually thought about going back and getting data on field goal attempts as well for this one, but I wanted to test out the relationship between this differential I was working with and the most basic statistic for scoring offense first. First, the 10,000 foot view of the relationship:

 

POINTS PER GAME	AVG. DIFFERENTIAL
35 OR MORE	13.45%
34-30	5.78%
29-25	3.96%
24-20	-2.48%
LESS THAN 20	-6.01%

 

FOR EACH TEAM:

Below are the comparisons of the 3^rddown differential to both win percentage and points per game for each team in the Big Ten, including our soon-to-be conference compatriots.

 

 

CONCLUSION:

I was a little happier with the results of this, even though it again confirms something that you already thought about the game - the fewer 3rd downs that you convert on offense and the more that you allow your opponent to convert, the less you score and the worse you will do overall, at least most of the time. Like any sport, there are several things that confound this and created exceptions, such as teams that have good defenses but also middling offenses (like Michigan State).

OBLIGATORY: