Four Traditional Box Score Stats That are Pretty Much Useless

[Todd Pence]

FIRST DOWNS
Yes, the achievement of getting first downs is essential to maintaining possessions and even scoring. But tracking the total number of first downs achieved by a team can be a misleading statistic in judging the efficiency of their offense.
Consider the following two cases: Team A gets the ball at their own twenty, and embarks on a long sustained drive in which they earn five separate first downs. The drive eventually bogs down in the red zone, and they settle for a field goal.
Team B starts on their own twenty, and on their first series complete a long bomb for a touchdown.
Now, obviously in the end result, team B has been more successful than team A. But in terms of first downs, team A has a whopping five to team B’s mere one!
I’ll punctuate the uselessness of first downs as a stat by pointing out that in the most lopsided NFL game of all time, the Bears’ 73-0 rout of the Redskins in the 1940 title game, both the Bears and Redskins finished with an equal number of first downs (17).

THIRD DOWN CONVERSIONS
A statistic related to first downs. Yes, a team that is better than its opponent in converting third downs has a better chance of winning the game than their opponent. But the problem with the third-down conversion statistic is what it leaves out. In the first place, it doesn’t give credit to the teams who do the job on first and second downs and so don’t put themselves in bad third-down situations. In the second place, the third down statistic completely ignores the times the offense elected to gamble by going for it on fourth down and succeeded, keeping the drive alive. In the box score, each of these instances are recorded as failures! There is no stipulation for a team who made good there third-down shortcomings by converting on fourth down and keeping the drive alive.

FUMBLES THAT AREN’T LOST
Every traditional football box score team stat section has a line reading FUMBLES-LOST. The second number is a vital stat, the first is meaningless. If a team fumbled the ball, and then recovered their own fumble, it is an inconsequential non-event. The non-lost fumbles stat is more insidious at the end of the year indiviual totals than it is in the individual game box scores. In a given year, we might be told that your favortie team’s leading rusher had five fumbles for the year. Yes, but how many of those five actually hurt his team?

TIME OF POSSESSION
Yes, there is a high correlation between the team that leads in TOP and the team that wins. But this is mostly due to the fact that the team leading in the fourth quarter attempts to control the ball more. In other words, TOP is a byproduct of, not a reason for, victory. And of course every year there are plenty of instances of blowouts in which the losing team dominates in TOP simply because the winning team scores so quickly every time it has the ball. In the most one-sided game in football history, Georgia Tech's 222-0 win over Cumberland College in 1916. Cumberland ran off 48 plays to GT's 29. Although TOP as a stat didn't exist in 1916, it seems from that stat that if it had, Cumberland would have dominated it. So much for TOP as any kind of meaningful stat.

[Qsmoov21]

7 minutes ago, Todd Pence said:

THIRD DOWN CONVERSIONS
A statistic related to first downs. Yes, a team that is better than its opponent in converting third downs has a better chance of winning the game than their opponent. But the problem with the third-down conversion statistic is what it leaves out. In the first place, it doesn’t give credit to the teams who do the job on first and second downs and so don’t put themselves in bad third-down situations. In the second place, the third down statistic completely ignores the times the offense elected to gamble by going for it on fourth down and succeeded, keeping the drive alive. In the box score, each of these instances are recorded as failures! There is no stipulation for a team who made good there third-down shortcomings by converting on fourth down and keeping the drive alive.



TIME OF POSSESSION
Yes, there is a high correlation between the team that leads in TOP and the team that wins. But this is mostly due to the fact that the team leading in the fourth quarter attempts to control the ball more. In other words, TOP is a byproduct of, not a reason for, victory. And of course every year there are plenty of instances of blowouts in which the losing team dominates in TOP simply because the winning team scores so quickly every time it has the ball. In the most one-sided game in football history, Georgia Tech's 222-0 win over Cumberland College in 1916. Cumberland ran off 48 plays to GT's 29. Although TOP as a stat didn't exist in 1916, it seems from that stat that if it had, Cumberland would have dominated it. So much for TOP as any kind of meaningful stat.

im gonna have to disagree with these two points. I dont know ANY team that doesn't get to third down. and hey if they barely get there and CONVERT it thats a big deal. that means you cant get the team off the field. and 3rd down conversions ride over to TIME OF POSSESION. because that does matter. If my offense holds the ball for 10 minutes of every quarter, that means 2 things.

1. your defense CANT get us off the field...
2. your offense CANT stay on the field...

TOP is crucial to the offenses success... if they cant hold onto the ball how are they going to score???

[FinSting]

Agree with all, except 3rd down conversions. Kinda important most of the time, really pisses off the defense

[Malfatron]

i totally agree about TOP

knowing what the TOP was would help you predict who won the game (because of running the ball in the fourth)

TOP may correlate with winning games, but it definitely isnt the cause of it

[JAF-N72EX]

8 minutes ago, Malfatron said:

i totally agree about TOP

knowing what the TOP was would help you predict who won the game (because of running the ball in the fourth)

TOP may correlate with winning games, but it definitely isnt the cause of it

I would say it depends on the scheme. For teams who run fast pace offenses and are far more pass oriented TOP may not mean much (see Chip Kelly). But teams who run a more balance/run offense or rely more on the run game it does, IMO.

Especially those who rely alot on defense. Without TOP your defense is going to get wore out quick and running on fumes in the 4th Q.

[incognito_man]

3rd down conversion is definitely not useless. It's a go-to metric to identify the top units in the league.

[Malfatron]

1 hour ago, JustAnotherFan said:

Without TOP your defense is going to get wore out quick and running on fumes in the 4th Q.

then they should calculate as actual time of possession 

the defense is pretty much just as tired on 3 incomplete passes as 3 completed passes for 1 yard.

but the latter takes much more time off the clock

[Toomers]

  Completion percentage 

[Malfatron]

QBR

[Bobikus]

59 minutes ago, Malfatron said:

then they should calculate as actual time of possession 

the defense is pretty much just as tired on 3 incomplete passes as 3 completed passes for 1 yard.

but the latter takes much more time off the clock

Yeah, TOP as a measure of "keeping the defense on the field" should be real time of possession, not game clock time of possession.

 

Also total fumbles is more of a measure of the player's performance while lost fumbles is more of a team stat.

[Shanedorf]

4 hours ago, Todd Pence said:

FIRST DOWNS
 

THIRD DOWN CONVERSIONS

 

I use the ratio of 1st downs to 3rd downs to measure offensive efficiency.
When an offense is humming along, they don't need no stinkin 3rd downs to keep the chain gang moving