1st Downs on 2nd Down

After the last post, it's easy to make a couple of quick charts for performance on 2nd down, so I'm dropping them here quickly.

First up, a comparison of how often teams get the necessary yardage for a first down on 2nd down vs 3rd down. 2nd and short is often deemed a good time to call any play you want, often a pass down field (high reward, but high risk). If this is the case, 2nd and short conversion rates should be lower than they are on 3rd and short, when teams are going to go conservative to pick up the yardage they need to move the chains. Unfortunately, the conversion rate doesn't really support that story. 2nd and short is pretty similar to 3rd and short as far as conversion rate goes.

And here is the frequency of the various distances on second down:

And now, I'm wondering how many yards per play teams get from various downs and distances, so I guess that's going to be the next post. It may be some time before I surface from this spiral of charts and graphs.