The Buffalo Bills haven’t had any difficulty whatsoever when it comes to scoring points. Which is wild, because us fans have seen them leave meat on the bone (a Cardinal WNY sin when it comes to wings). Yet at 5-1, they’ve won nailbiter after nailbiter thanks to a defense that doesn’t seem to particularly enjoy sitting on the bench. It’s kind of them to allow Josh Allen to catch his breath, but would another third down stop here or there kill them?
I mean, it’s bad. Real, real bad. And getting worse
rather than better…
Some stats to ponder
I think all football fans can agree that whenever possible, it’s preferable for your favorite team to get a stop on third down. If you can believe it, there’s a good correlation between third-down stops and points allowed by NFL defenses. Therefore third down stops are a good thing as they help your team prevent points which is of course correlated with winning.
Complicated math lesson aside, let’s set a baseline and then stack up some Bills numbers. The current NFL average 39.29% for allowing third down conversions. We’ll call that the perfect average (aka the “mean”) for purposes of discussion. If we treat “average” as a cluster of teams and apply my rule of four so I can skip all sorts of calculations I don’t care about doing tonight, the average line is anything below 43.371% (set by the Green Bay Packers in the 9th worst spot for the metric).
OK then. That means you don’t want to allow greater than 43.37% or risk me saying you’re bad or terrible. Where do the Bills currently sit? They’re the fifth worst team in the league at 45.00%. That’s already bad, but I have worse news.
They’re getting worse!
Against the Houston Texans they allowed 43.75%.
Against the Detroit Lions, they allowed 36.36%.
Against the Los Angeles Chargers it was 40.00%, then 41.67% against the New England Patriots, then 50.00% against the Los Angeles Rams, and most recently 58.33% against the Raiders. Want even worse news?
No one allows more third downs than the Dallas Cowboys, and even they only do so at a 54.67% rate. Sure I’m comparing the Bills’ worst day to Dallas average day, but it helps add perspective on just how bad it was against the Raiders. Bills fans expected growing pains, but the idea is that it leads to improvement over the course of the season and in this key metric, it just ain’t happening so far this year.
Let’s check the film then!
What we have is every single third down the Raiders faced against Buffalo. The official stat sheet has them going 7 of 12 to get that 58.33% conversion rate noted above. That said, the one by penalty and the one field goal are not counted in those totals. Do with that information what you will.
I don’t have the time tonight to break down every single play in narrative format without jeopardizing my ability to do my fulltime job due to sleep deprivation so here’s my short version…
There’s a little bit of hope. Remember that it’s NORMAL to give up around 40% of conversions. The 22.22% the Minnesota Vikings allow would of course be great, but we don’t need exceptional right yet as we’re setting our sights on “mediocre” first.
To get to that level, Buffalo would have needed two less conversions allowed in this game. Honestly, I think they were close on a few. There are several lowlights in that short, depressing, awful film I have above that are due to a bit of confusion which created reaction lag.
A little more time and understanding of the system could pay off. We also have Tre’Davious White to look forward to. If he sees the field, I do think recognition of the play could be a major advantage compared to what we see in the clips. Physical speed is great, but as we see on plays like the 3rd & 8 about a quarter of the way into the video, it’s the confusion that can kill.
Even with the growing pains, there are several play in this game where small improvements give the defense a chance at a stop. If they can make those little changes, perhaps they can reverse the decline and get back to their middling ways .
