Detroit Lions Weblog

3rd Down Offense/Defense

I saw an article today in the joint edition of the Detroit News and Free Press that I found quite interesting. They found that teams who had the best 3rd conversion % had generally won more games than other teams. I showed the Top 5 teams and then Detroit for comparison.

3rd Down Conversions(offense)

Team/ GP/ 3rd%/ W

Minn. 5/ 55.9/ 4
INDY 5/ 49.0/ 4
G Bay 6/ 48.8/ 2
St. L 6/ 47.5/ 4
NE 5/ 46.0/ 5
31.DET 5/ 25.4/ 3

This is symptomatic of how conservative the Lions have been on offense. It also gives credence to the notion that you need to have another play to call on third and long besides a screen pass or the “Wayne Fontes Draw”.

On the flipside, the Lions defense is the 25th ranked defense in third down conversion percentage. I have included the number of third downs converted per game and the percentage of succesful 3rd down conversions per game. This is the bottom tier in it’s glory:

3rd Down Conversions (Defense)

Team G 3rd Md/G 3rd% L
Det 5/ 6.0/ 41.7/ 2
Oak 6/ 5.0/ 41.1/ 4
Indy 5/ 6.4/ 48.5/ 1
TB 6/ 5.5/ 37.5/ 5
New O 6/ 5.7/ 43.6/ 4
Jax 6/ 6.2/ 46.2/ 2
Houston 6/ 6.7/ 50.0 3

I think Tampa Bay is a particularly interesting case here. They have a good enough defense to hold a lot of teams to having third down situations. Yet, their offense is so pathetic that the Bucs are constantly facing third down situations on defense. The situation with Indianapolis is also interesting. The fact that they have converted so many third downs on offense makes up for teams ability to move the ball. Also, in many cases with their big-play capability they assume big leads early and play a softer form of defense while already featuring a sieve-like defensive unit.