Incredibly few 3rd downs on Panthers TD drives

[KB_fan]

As I've been updating my Panthers gamebook data spreadsheet this weekend, and updating my "game at a glance" drive charts from Seattle & Philly (which I'll post separately soon...), I began to notice a pretty amazing pattern. 

I'm not enough a a football historian or expert to know how unique or special these stats are, but as a casual fan, these stats jump off the page at me:

So far this season, our offense has scored 17 touchdowns.  On those 17 TD-scoring drives, we've had a grand total of only 12 3rd down attempts. 

Those 17 drives totaled 130 plays and 1184 yards - so that's less than 1 3rd down attempt every 10 plays, and only about 1 3rd down attempt per every 100 yards gained.  WOW!

We've had 8 TD-scoring drives with NO 3rd downs faced during the drive - inlcuding ALL THREE TD drives in the Philly game.  In that game our three TD drives included 15 plays for 212 yards, and we never had to convert a 3rd down.

On our TD-scoring drives, the ratio of 1st downs to 3rd downs is 6.2 - 6 times as many 1st downs (74) as 3rd downs (12) on those drives.  For ALL our drives this season, the ratio of 1st downs to 3rd downs is 1.8  (129 1st downs to 72 3rd downs).

It seems to me the offense is playing with incredible efficiency.  When they're hot, they're hot and they seem to move the chains easily on the drives we score TDs.  It also seems to me we're scoring MORE TDs this season - with 3 or more offensive TDs in 5 of our 6 games.  (We only had 1 against JAX.  3 against HOU, NO, TB and Philly, 4 against Seattle). 

Here's a look at brief stats for all 17 of our TD scoring drives by our offense so far this season.  (Sorry I don't (yet) have breakdowns of passing yards vs. rushing yards.  I may add that later.)

 

 

 

[ItsNotGonnaBeAlright]

It's seemed like this offense struggles on a drive or two, then suddenly everything clicks on drive and chunks of yards get eaten up en route to the end zone. Nice to see some numbers that reflect that.

[Jangler]

I don't have a gamebook data spreadsheet. So that makes me a casual fan.

[KB_fan]

The stats above are excerpted from a spreadsheet page I created where I summarized every drive of all 6 of our games so far this season.  I'll see if I can paste a screen shot of it below.  It might be too large to really fit well here, but I'll try.

[ItsNotGonnaBeAlright]

1 minute ago, Jangler said:

I don't have a gamebook data spreadsheet. So that makes me a casual fan.

Filthy casual.

[KB_fan]

And here's a small summary table showing the outcome of all 75 of our drives so far this season:

17 TDS

10 FGS

3   X FG (missed FG)

7   INT

1   FUM

13  3/0 PT  (I separated 3 & outs from other punts just for personal interest)

15  PUNT

1   DOWNS

8   END of half / end of game

75  Total drives

 

updated: I corrected the 3 & out figures.  I discovered I'd missed one, so that total has gone up by 1, while the other punt total has gone down by 1.

 

[Jangler]

2 minutes ago, ItsNotGonnaBeAlright said:

Filthy casual.

Yeah, that fits with the one bath a week.

[Dex]

Down with Shula!!!

[KB_fan]

Personally, I still get chills looking at those Seattle stats.  4 80 yard drive Touchdowns, and only 3 3rd downs faced in 42 plays.  That is just mad scary.  Cam and our offense was on another plane entirely in that 4th quarter.  In Friggin Seattle against that defense, and with them having owned us.

Truly that was a win for the ages.  Can't get enough of watching those game highlights.  Best Panthers game I've ever watched in my nearly 3 years as a fan.

[the butch]

Shula was quoted as saying that there haven't been a lot of third downs, and even when there are, they have been short.  My opinion is that it's a combination of smart play calling and playing to your strengths [credit Shula] and Cam's maturation [credit Cam].  Cam made the comment that during his Pro Bowl [I think] time he was talking with Drew Brees and Brees made the comment that, "you have to get yards."  Cam evidently remembered that because he's said that since, and it has shown through on the field.  

[KB_fan]

I just checked out the NFL.com stats page.  Our 72 third down attempts so far this season has us 4th in the league in terms of fewest 3rd down attempts.

http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?seasonType=REG&offensiveStatisticCategory=GAME_STATS&d-447263-n=1&d-447263-o=1&d-447263-p=1&d-447263-s=DOWN_3RD_ATTEMPTED&tabSeq=2&season=2015&role=TM&Submit=Go&archive=false&conference=null&defensiveStatisticCategory=null&qualified=false

However, I notice that data is not game adjusted, including some teams that have played 7 games, and others that have played only 6.  So I created a revised table with the 3rd downs per game stats.  Those calculations change the rankings slightly and drop us to 6th in terms of fewest 3rd downs / game.

Here are stats for the best 10 teams in terms of fewest 3rd downs.  Also showing 3rd down conversions and 1st down totals, and the 1st / 3rd down ratio.

It's perhaps an obvious comment to make, but scarcity of 3rd down attempts doesn't necessarily mean an offense is playing well.  If the team is constantly turning over the ball, or always going 3 and out, that could also be a factor in decreasing the number of 3rd downs per game.

What's so striking for the Panthers though is how much lower our 3rd down numbers are for our touchdown drives:  6 first downs per 3rd down as opposed to only 1.8 first downs per 3rd down on all our drives combined.

[KB_fan]

Time for me to call it a night, but just one last comment on this.   Seeing the yards/play stats in the table above, I did the math just now to compare yards/play on our 17 TD drives with overall yards/play.

All drives:  5.3 yards/play

Touchdown drives:  9.1 yards/play

 

Here's how yards/play on our touchdown drives shakes out per game:

• Philly            14.1 yards/play on our TD drives
• Seattle           7.6
• Tampa          10.4
• New Orleans  9.3
• Houston         9.5
• Jax                 5.5

Exciting that our highest total was in our most recent game, suggesting that the offense is really putting it together.

[KB_fan]

By the way, in case anyone is wondering, I have included Ed Dickson's fumble recovery touchdown in the stats above for the 17 touchdowns.  I know it's not technically an offensive touchdown... but it was scored by our offense, not our defense, and it's not that different than a long rushing touchdown, so I decided to include it.

[PhillyB]

1 hour ago, KB_fan said:

It's perhaps an obvious comment to make, but scarcity of 3rd down attempts doesn't necessarily mean an offense is playing well.  If the team is constantly turning over the ball, or always going 3 and out, that could also be a factor in decreasing the number of 3rd downs per game.

this is precisely what i would question. you'd have to compare our lack of third downs on TD drives with the rest of the league, but comparing 3rd down quantity includes too many variables to provide any meaningful ranking. are we really significantly more efficient, i wonder, or is it a fact that drives get touchdowns because they were good enough to not get first downs, rather than the reverse?