2015 Short-Yardage Results

by Scott Kacsmar

For those complaining that offense is too easy in today's NFL, this may be the most telling piece of evidence yet: the last eight seasons (2008-2015) are the top seasons ever in average yards per play. The 5.48 yards per play teams averaged in 2015 set a new high-water mark in league-wide production.

Yet when teams only need a yard or two to extend a drive, we still see conversion rates centering around 61 or 62 percent. Offenses can do better with smarter strategies in these situations. After all, more than two-thirds of plays in the NFL gain yards. But we still see a tendency for teams to treat a situation like third-and-1 like it must be old-school football with big formations, telegraphing that a run is coming straight into a pile of humanity.

Getting cute is usually not the answer either. It was a fourth-and-3 play, so it falls out of our short-yardage range, but you could say for the second year in a row that the most absurd call of the season came in a game against the Patriots -- those Bill Belichick Jedi mind tricks at work again. The Colts went for a fake punt and Griff Whalen, a wide receiver, snapped the ball to Colt Anderson, a safety, with the rest of the team aligned to the right side of the field. Darwinism won out and the Colts were buried for a loss on the play, losing any hope they had left to win that night.

The Colts tried a unique formation on 4th down.
It didn't work. #NEvsIND http://t.co/Eh0HXpFV00

— NFL (@NFL) October 19, 2015

At least they subscribed to "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line" theory here, but never did 3 yards feel so far away.

As far as a qualified short-yardage situation goes, the Steelers' fake field goal in Seattle may take the prize for worst call of the year. On a day when Ben Roethlisberger would pass for 456 yards, Pittsburgh spent the commercial break before the start of the second quarter to draw up this mess on fourth-and-2.

"Hey, what if we have Landry Jones lob one across the field to Alejandro Villanueva?"https://t.co/9ry6hCrkMu

— Chris Burke (@ChrisBurke_SI) November 29, 2015

There is nothing like asking backup quarterback Landry Jones to stand 9 yards deep before a throwback pass to tackle Alejandro Villanueva. The only thing this highlight is missing is the Madden-like rotation of the camera after the inevitable interception.

There are some short-yardage situations where it is worth the risk to try a deep pass in hopes of a big gain, but generally speaking, this is one area of the game where the run (especially from quarterbacks) is consistently more effective than the pass.

The following is a look at the short-yardage success of 2015 teams.

Note: All data is for the regular season only and excludes spikes, kneeldowns, intentional safeties, and botched kicks. We are not able to differentiate between plays that have a full yard to go versus inches to go. Plays including offensive penalties that cause the down to be replayed are excluded. This happened twice in 2015. Since the down is repeated, these plays do not officially count as conversion attempts on third or fourth down. Passes include sacks. The only plays studied are on third or fourth down with 1 or 2 yards to go, because these are the most important short-yardage plays that essentially decide if the offensive drive will continue. Most data goes back to 2009.

Third Down

Our first table looks at the summary of plays on third-and-1 and third-and-2 since 2009:

It was another good year for the quarterbacks. Third-and-2 quarterback runs succeeded more often than we have seen in recent history, but much of that comes from scrambles (19 of 21 worked). The volume of quarterback runs on third-and-1 dipped, but they converted at the highest rate since 2009. Third-and-1 passes had their highest conversion rate in the last seven seasons, topping 60 percent for the first time. We are still in the process of fixing some errors in air yardage data for 2015, so perhaps in a future ALEX topic we can look to see if teams threw shorter, safer passes more on third-and-1 this past season.

As expected, non-quarterback runs on third-and-1 have the smallest variance and work about two-thirds of the time. The surprising part is third-and-2 runs have been successful 65.7 percent of the time over the last three seasons after converting just 56.7 percent of the time from 2009-2012. If this trend should continue, it would just make teams look even sillier for continuing to pass roughly 70 percent of the time in third-and-2 situations.

I looked at the period of 2013-15, excluding scrambles and converting quarterback runs to designed runs. Among the league's 32 teams, only the Eagles (44.2 percent) and Bengals (48.4 percent) have passed on fewer than half of their third-and-2 plays. Even the 30th-ranked Seahawks (59.2 percent) are a hair under 60 percent passing. Yet 24 teams have a better conversion rate when running on third-and-2 versus passing. The best overall conversion rate belongs to Chip Kelly's Eagles (75.0 percent), the most run-heavy offense in the group. Interestingly enough, Kelly is now with the 49ers, ranked first in pass conversion rate and 32nd in run conversion rate. Expect those numbers to flip around this season.

If we did something similar for a very common situation with huge variance such as first-and-10, then we would expect a good mixture of results that better highlight an offense's strength and weakness. When it is third-and-2, the short distance to go is a great equalizing factor, shrinking the talent gap in the process. In tougher situations like third-and-long, you would expect more talented offenses to shine. Not to stick with Philadelphia, but the 2015 Eagles are a great example of this. The Eagles ranked fifth in DVOA on third-and-short, but were 30th on all first downs and 27th in third-and-long situations. In other words, it does not take a genius to manufacture 1 or 2 yards.

It was about nine years ago when I started looking at the third-and-2 conundrum, and I still cannot understand why teams view it so strongly as a passing situation. While the seasons since then have been the pass-happiest in NFL history, even the early 2000s saw the same trend: more passes than runs on third-and-2 despite an inferior conversion rate.

One strategy the offense discards with 2 yards to go is the quarterback sneak, the most effective scrimmage play in football.

Since 2009, the sneak has only worked six times in nine attempts on third-and-2. Compare that to third-and-1 where the sneak has a success rate of 86.6 percent. In fact, 70.6 percent of quarterback runs on third-and-1 since 2009 are sneaks.

Note: teams were able to turn two botched handoffs/snaps into first downs in 2015 (thanks, fumble luck). From 2009-2014, only one botched play out of 31 turned into a first down on third-and-short.

We know teams basically ignore the sneak when 2 yards are needed on third or fourth down. Out of 4,090 plays since 2009, only 10 sneaks were executed, and seven worked. It is hard to imagine there have not been dozens of golden opportunities to squeeze in a sneak with 2 yards to go. Believe it or not, out of the 649 sneaks I have charted for this seven-season study, 62.7 percent of them gained at least 2 yards. A good surge is a good surge, and referees can be generous with the spot on these plays.

There will always be drives where the clock is an issue or the goal is loftier than a 2-yard gain, but possession is crucial in the NFL, and it is hard to say most offenses are optimizing their short-yardage success.

Fourth Down

The following table looks at the summary of plays on fourth-and-1 and fourth-and-2 since 2009:

What stood out most here was just how terrible offenses were in the 2011 season, when only 50 percent of fourth-and-short plays worked. In 2011, fourth-and-1 runs (41.6 percent) and fourth-and-2 passes (31.0 percent) just had abysmal success rates that are way out of line with the other years of data. That was the year of the lockout, but it was still a very offensive season overall, so chalk this up to randomness. There were not any particular running backs bringing the fourth-and-1 runs down that year as Baltimore's Ray Rice had the most failures with three stuffs. Denver's Tim Tebow and Tampa Bay's Josh Freeman led the way among passers with three incompletions each on fourth-and-2.

The overall fourth-and-short conversion rate of 61.8 percent in 2015 was the lowest in the last four years, but that is still good evidence that teams should go for it on fourth-and-short more often.

While the sample size of fourth-down plays is much smaller than that on third-down, it is interesting to see how consistent the conversion rate has been for fourth-and-1 passes; typically right around 54 percent.

Here's the summary of all quarterback runs on fourth-and-1 since 2009:

Quarterbacks had a solid 2015, picking up 27 first downs in 34 attempts, but that includes two botched handoffs that get credited to the quarterback. From 2009-2014, there was only one such play on fourth-and-1.

Finally, here is the seven-year summary of each short-yardage play type:

Quarterback Effectiveness

When you look at these quarterback conversion rates since 2000 (minimum 20 attempts, active players in bold), it's impossible not to see that overall quarterback talent has little to no impact on short-yardage rushing success:

Tom Brady added to his unprecedented volume by going 9-of-10 on quarterback sneaks in 2015, though it was the second season in a row he was stopped on one. He had a streak from 2005 to 2012 where he was not stopped even one time. Of all teams, the Colts actually were the one defense to stop him.

Cam Newton is starting to rack up the volume too, and had a fantastic 2015 where he was 17-of-18 on short-yardage runs, only stopped by the Jaguars on a sneak in Week 1. He was 15-of-18 in 2014. Whereas almost every Brady run is a sneak, only 26 of Newton's 87 plays are sneaks. He has run that trademarked quarterback dive (also known as power) 32 times, with 25 successes.

Ryan Fitzpatrick's passing stats may leave something to be desired, but he was 9-of-9 on short-yardage runs last season. He is as likely as any quarterback in the league to hurry to the line for a quick sneak.

Matt Ryan was more nimble than usual last season, converting 6-of-7 short-yardage runs with a botched handoff being his only failure. He scrambled successfully four times, including a notable juke of Thomas Davis in Week 16.

Life just hasn't been the same since I watched Matt Ryan juke Thomas Davis yesterday (Week 16). pic.twitter.com/R0FWjcW18M

— Scott Kacsmar (@FO_ScottKacsmar) March 23, 2016

Russell Wilson is an interesting name to bring up the rear, because he is one of the most effective running quarterbacks overall, but that has not translated to short-yardage success. Part of that is he is much better scrambling than on designed runs, and scrambles only account for five of his 25 short-yardage plays. He has also been dinged by two botched handoffs and a botched snap, which obviously hurts his percentage. Still, he is just 5-of-8 on the sneak, so that might be one area where his lack of size (and the weakness of Seattle's interior line) do the Seahawks no favors.

Matthew Stafford still does not have enough attempts to qualify yet, but he is 17-of-17 on short-yardage runs in his career (converting all 12 sneaks). Maybe he should run more instead of Detroit being so dependent on his arm in these situations.

2015 Results

Finally, we close with a look at the short-yardage results for 2015 offenses and defenses. For the sake of sample sizes, I combined both downs and distances together for an average of 47 plays per team. For offenses, the pass ratio (Pass%) includes scrambles as passes. Teams are ranked by conversion rate (best to worst).

Seattle and Philadelphia are the only offenses to rank in the top five in conversion rate in both 2014 and 2015. New retiree Marshawn Lynch was 9-of-14 on plays where he was the ballcarrier or target, so it's not like he was the driving force behind Seattle's 2015 success. However, DeMarco Murray was 15-of-15 on short-yardage runs for Philadelphia, so the Titans will hope he can improve their horrific short-yardage offense that ranked 32nd in conversion rate, yards per play, and DVOA a season ago.

Denver easily had the best short-yardage offense in 2014, but really fell off in 2015. Both quarterbacks and running backs struggled, though C.J. Anderson was the most effective of those players, and so far he is the only one of the four returning to Denver in 2016.

No offense took more risks in short yardage than Pittsburgh, which we detailed throughout the season in Ben Roethlisberger's ALEX. Pittsburgh ranks 15 spots higher in DVOA than it does in conversion rate. Roethlisberger did well to convert 16-of-23 plays, but the problems were more with Le'veon Bell (only 1-of-4 on runs), Michael Vick (1-of-6), and that absolutely ridiculous fake field goal from the introduction.

Here are the defenses.

For the second year in a row, the Chiefs allowed the lowest conversion rate, but their DVOA was nearly twice as good as it was in 2014 (-18.6%). Seattle had the top DVOA thanks to allowing a miniscule 2.6 yards per play. The biggest disconnect comes with Baltimore, which ranked 16th in conversion rate but 30th in DVOA due to allowing some big plays.

The Giants managed to beat out the Saints for the worst short-yardage defense. You don't need a six-man committee to see that problem, but a huge spending spree in free agency may not be the solution either.

Denver and Carolina were the best defenses in 2015, but both look pretty pedestrian here. Then again, the Patriots were dead last in 2014 in short-yardage defense, but we know how that season ended. You just need to make the big stops, such as Denver's interception on New England's two-point conversion attempt at the end of the AFC Championship Game.