About that Offensive 3rd down success rate...

Seen a lot this week about how bad UGA is at converting on third down, and I thought folks were talking about DEFENSE.  But then I saw people saying we were uncharacteristically bad on 3rd down on offense.  So, I decided to look into it.


UGA's 36.92% is indeed 83rd in the country.  That sounds really really bad.  It's even worse when you look at the fact that we've converted only 24 3rd downs all year, good for 101st in the country.

Ouch.

Of course, then you have realize that Georgia also is tied with the 100th most 3rd down attempts (65).  Or, as some would say... 22nd best.

Oh, and at HOME, we're at 42%, which is good for around 50th in the country.

We've run on 27 of the 65 3rd downs.  We've converted 4 FD.  We have 1 rushing TD on 3rd down.

5/27 is 18.5%.  We convert on 18.5% of 3rd downs by rushing.

Our best down-to-go distance?  3 or less.  We're average 2.22 yards on third 1-3.  On 3rd and 4-9, we're averaging less than a yard per attempt.  On third and 10+, we're averaging 5.17 YPC...but that's not great, considering the to-go is 10+.

We've passed on 38 3rd downs.

Again, we do well on 3rd and 1-3.  We're completing 83.3% on 3rd and 1-3 (5/6 with 3 FD and 1 TD).
3rd and 4-9 we're 11/19 with 6FD and 2 TD.   On 3rd and 10+, we're 6/13 with 2TD, 2FD and 1 INT).  Murray's completion mark of 57.9 on 3rd down is his lowest on any down (2nd down %age of 70.6 is his highest).

Interestingly enough, Murray is better on 3rd and 7-9 (63.6) than on 3rd and 4-6 (50).  But, 3rd and 10+ is downright scare.  Murray's only completing 46.2%.


So, we're seeing what we know - while "GEORGIA FOOTBALL" is power running and built on being able to blow folks off the ball, on 3rd down, they're dropping the ball.  The passing game is where we succeed on 3rd down.

Also, here's a fun one for you - we've made a 1st down on 1st down 47 times.  38 times we've done it on 2nd down. 21 times we've made a 1st down on 3rd (3 more by penalty).  We've scored 10 TDs on 1st down, 9 TDs on 2nd down and 6 TDs on third down.


We can see that Georgia's offense is at its best on 1st down.  We get the most 1st downs, and we get the most TDs.  3rd down is our worst down.  We've made less 1st downs, and less TDs.

Of course, that's all based on raw numbers.  When you start to break down all of them by percentages, you find that our "Success" percentage (either scoring or getting a first down) on 3rd down isn't that far off from our other downs.

47/175 = 26.85%
38/114 = 33.33%
21/65 = 32.30 % (I'm guessing we've converted-by-penalty 3 times, since we have 16 passes and 5 runs which have converted)

So, while we put so much stress on 3rd down because its our "Last chance" (before our actual "last chance") to get a 1st, the 3rd down Offense is not, from a %age basis, lacking so much from the rest of the offense.



Ok, that was exhausting.

Go Dawgs.