*DSFL South S46 3rd Down Efficiency Review - Printable Version +- International Simulation Football League (https://forums.sim-football.com) +-- Forum: Community (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) +--- Forum: Media (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=37) +---- Forum: Graded Articles (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=38) +---- Thread: *DSFL South S46 3rd Down Efficiency Review (/showthread.php?tid=50019)

*DSFL South S46 3rd Down Efficiency Review - dcphil - 03-08-2024 Good morning breakfast clubbers,  I have decided to embark on a journey of reviewing our beloved DSFL South team defenses to see if 3rd down performance was indicative of overall performance. Of course I'm a little biased in why I chose this since Dewey Greenbeans is tearing it up in the lower league. The really dumb choice of picking metrics that require painstakingly reviewing play-by-play of every game was a choice I made with 0 thought at all. You may be able to understand why I stuck with only the South. I did not take into account big plays on 4th Downs, so feel free to evaluate that in my stead. I counted the number of Big Plays performed on 3rd Down by the defense, which is any play where a pass was defended (PD), a play was sacked, a Fumble was forced and recovered by the Defense (FR), an interception caught, or a safety occurred.  Let's just jump right into it, team by team.  Abbreviations: 3rd Down Defensive Efficiency = 3DE  Tijuana Luchadores 10 4 0 .714 391 315 Tijuana had a very good year and advanced to the playoffs as the top South team again. 3rd Down D Efficiency in total was middling, with a division low 57.07%. To be fair, they also faced a division high 205 3rd Downs. This is indicative of solid performance holding teams to smaller yard chunks in early downs and failing more on 3rd. Eight games fell between 50%-60% 3DE. Games 12 and 13 against Norfolk and KC, both Away, fell below 50%, and Portland at home was a staggering 82.35% efficiency (14/17). The Luchadors pulled off 25 Big Plays on 3rd down.  Dallas Birddogs 7 7 0 .500 407 378 As a member of the Birddogs, it felt like we made a lot of big stops, which is what inspired me to pull these statistics. After review, more realistically, the team was streaky. And they were streaky good when they needed it most (against Tijuana). Dallas faced 187 3rd downs with a 3DE of 57.75%, a smidge above Tijuana. They tied the Luchadors with 25 Big Plays as well. Weeks 1,3 and 10 against Norfolk, Bondi, and Minn (all Away) were below 50% 3DE. Games 7 and 8 both against London were above 80%.  I did see who on the team had the most Big Plays and here are the tallies: Retreiver 4 Fantringham 2 OhioRizzler 3 Yakman 2 Greenbeans 7 Furchi 2 Garlic Jr 1 Nietzsche 1 Sina 1 imnegs 2 Just pointing out that Dewey did what he needed to do on 3rd Down when it mattered. NBD.  Bondi Beach Buccaneers 6 8 0 .429 366 411 Bondi Beach faced a low 165 3rd Downs while on defense, and gave up not too many fewer points than the other teams. This indicates to me that Bondi had a good defense, but was exposed mostly on big plays on early downs. They were steady throughout the season dipping below 50% 3DE only one game, week 10 Away against London. Seven weeks were at 60% efficiency or above which is noticeably better than the competition, but it never peaked about 71.43% for a single game. Bondi had the lowest Big Play total calculated with 22.  Norfolk Seawolves 5 9 0 .357 398 428 Norfolk was a fascinating team to watch this year. I see a good season on the close horizon, so watch out Tijuana. Norfolk gave up a league high 428 points, however, their 3DE was actually the highest of the four South teams with 61.24%. They faced 178 3rd Downs, only above Bondi's 165. They had the most Big Plays with 28 as well. The secondary was excellent with 5 3rd Down INTs and 16 passes defended.  After spending hours pulling this manual data and reviewing it, it appears that 3rd down efficiency is interesting, but not very correlative to wins and losses. Big Plays, percentage, and total 3rd downs faced did not mirror the final rankings of these 4 teams. It's kind of a bummer to do this work and conclude that the data isn't significant, but I guess we have to do the work to know for sure. Thanks to our pal @oknom who provided the turnover differential for these teams, it appears that is a better indicator of how these teams ultimately performed. Dallas doubled the next highest team with +16 to Tijuanas +8 margin. Bondi Beach had a -4 and Norfolk with a -8. This mirrored the South's final standings if you take into account the playoff victory of Dallas over Tijuana (finally). Thanks for reading this, yall. RE: DSFL South S46 3rd Down Efficiency Review - JJ5 - 03-08-2024 great stuff man!