First Down with Pat Kirwan

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I love Pat Kirwan. I am a late comer to the wisdom of Pat and I am better for it. Those that do not know the football mind of Pat Kirwan immediately should go right now and get Sirius satellite radio. The NFL Radio channel has almost completely dominated my listening, in the car, in the office and at home. All the hosts are good, Adam Schein, Bob Pappa, Randy Cross, Solomon Wilcots, Shannon Sharpe, Jim Miller, former Redskin Ross Tucker, former Redskins coach Marty Schottenheimer, Dan Reeves, they are all good.

My favorite though is Movin the Chains in the afternoons with Tim Ryan and Pat Kirwan. Tim, a four year pro with the Chicago Bears in the early 90s is one of the greatest players in USC Trojan history, all time leading tackler, all time sack leader and led the team to three Rose Bowls. I like him better on the radio than in the booth on Sundays where he works with Sam Rosen on FOX NFL games though I am warming up to TV Tim. Radio Tim is heavily into football vernacular and when he gets it going can get into the weeds of life as an NFL player, both the good and bad.

Pat, a former offensive coordinator with Hofstra University, was a scout with the then Phoenix Cardinals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers before moving to the New York Jets where he moved from defensive assistant to the general manager's office, handling the salary cap and negotiating player contracts. His perspective from both the sidelines and the front office provides incredible insight into how teams evaluate talent and how they deploy it on the field. His language is spare and cuts to the point. Together they get way down into the nitty gritty of the NFL, get lots of great guests and take lots of listener calls. It is as often that you will hear them commiserating with miserable fans as you will hear them (gently) berate overzealous fans for outsized expectations and unrealistic goals. I learn something every time I listen to this show.

And so I did earlier this week, maybe Monday? When Tim and Pat were discussing as usual, how teams put themselves (or rather, don't) into position for success. This particular conversation was about how the accepted wisdom that teams must perform on third down to be successful can miss a central notion in offensive football: that first down performance is the leading indicator for third down situation, and that third downs can be avoided entirely with sufficient first down performance.

Set aside for a moment the thought currently in your head: fucking duh of coarse you have to have a good first down or else you end up in a tailspin of passing situations on second down and if that does not go well which it will not the more you do it leads to third and long or longer.

A day or two after I heard this bit on the radio Pat helpfully published his thoughts on the matter in column form at NFL.com, go have a look at the handy dandy chart showing rates of first down conversion based on second down and third down distance. For example if you can get to second and one to five yards then you have a 56 percent chance of getting a first down on the next play. By contrast second and 10 or more yards has a 17 percent chance of converting, and if you cannot shorten that third down then you are looking at third and 10 or more yards which has a 20 percent conversion rate.

Moral of the story: as close to five yards as you can get are needed on first down, all the percentages flow from this break point. If you can do this then you are looking at more than a 50 percent chance at converting that set of downs.

Let us have a look at the Redskins first down performance through two games and see if we can draw some conclusions about the team's positioning for success in conversion. We will divide it up by run and pass with incompletes counting as zero yard passes and sacks counting as negative passing yards.

In game one against the Giants the Redskins averaged 3.5 yards on first down, 11 runs versus seven passes on first down and found themselves in third down and five or more yards 10 times in 10 total possessions (tallies from play by play here).

In game two against the Saints the Redskins averaged 6.4 yards on first down, 19 passes versus 12 runs on first down and found themselves in third down and five or more yards nine times in 11 total possessions (tallies from play by play here).

Similar number of drives, similar number of third and longs, a totally different first down average, totally different scoring, totally different outcome. Planning to do well on first down is a given. Actually doing well on first down gives the team a material advantage on the field.

Pat Kirwan rocks.



Pat Kirwan from NFL.com.