Evans Hall: Down Bad by Third Down
Cal's Exceptional Mediocrity in Converting Downs
Cal continues to be steeped in mediocre offensive performance. Just as I mentioned in the article on the “Endless Eight” style article for Cal football: Cal football has been the same on offense for the last eight years. In this article I will dig even deeper into the down conversion stats.
Cal Football Fails to Make It’s Own Luck
Cal’s 1st down performance has been the reason why we’re starting games in the hole. 2nd and long is the story of the offense where we get some yards going but not much. It isn’t as woeful as the 2022 Musgrave era where we faced the longest 3rd and long in P4 football, but we’re not helping ourselves in the long run with putting us in negative game scripts.
Failing to Convert, or How Cal Football is Basically Shinto in it’s Conversion Attempts
2nd and long likely dictates the low 2nd down conversion rates. Add in a destitute level of production on 1st down running the ball, touching the single digits of runs that gain us 1st downs on 1st downs probably dictates the game theory for the opposing defenses that they should just lock down Nando rather than pay special attention to the run game.
Distribution of Conversion
If we really drill down to Cal’s down and distance conversion rates vs the rest of the country (each dot is a different P5 team facing a P5 defense) we can see that especially on 2nd and 5-10 as well as 3rd and short situation we’re not doing too well. If we assume a gain of of <=5 yards on 1st down we’re sub-standard on 2nd downs forcing a 3rd down situation where even on 3rd and 1 we’re not ensured a 75/25 chance at a conversion, which is still on the lower en of conversion rates.
Return of the Pain Index
Despite it all, Cal still slots right around average in the P5 in having a painful offense to watch. This is likely lifted by our play against Miami, Wake, and Oregon State. From our future opponents we have a woeful Stanford (they average the same amount of offensive plays and 10 fewer points per game), a “gotta go fast somewhere” Syracuse, and an SMU that is just a step behind Miami in offensive output efficiency. (that FSU down there is painful to see).
To drill down on a play by play basis:
Cal’s defense has been good but not great, but the offense is so deeply mediocre it hurts to watch. But hey, at least we’re not Stanford! Or Wake, or Syracuse on defense.