048: 🏈 Maye is Money on 3rd down 🏈

Third down success, random recommendations, and updates to FBS logs.

Money Maye

After closing last season with four consecutive losses, North Carolina is undefeated through three games. Quarterback Drake Maye has completed over 70 percent of pass attempts with four touchdowns and four interceptions.

Maye’s numbers haven’t been as electric as they were at the start of last season. The Heisman chatter isn’t loud and a few of the interceptions have been unsavory.

And while UNC has won games in other ways with a competent defense and a healthy rushing attack, Maye has been a gigantic part of the team’s success so far.

Specifically, on third down.

The Tar Heel offense has converted 28-of-43 third downs through three games this season. The 65.1 percent conversion rate is second amongst FBS teams in 2023, trailing only Oklahoma (67.6 rate or 25-of-37).

Maye is 18-for-22 passing on third down for 269 yards and one touchdown to no interceptions. On the ground, he has rushed seven times on third down for 32 yards. Maye’s QBR on third down is 97.9.

Four those seven rushing attempts have led to a first down and 13 of the 18 pass completions have moved the chains. That’s 17 first downs or conversions on those third down plays.

The average third down distance is 6.42 yards and Carolina has converted nearly 83 percent of its third down attempts that are five yards or shorter.

Maye and the Tar Heels are 4-of-14 on third downs that are six yards or longer. The four conversions have all gone over 10 yards, and all from the right-arm of Maye to a Carolina receiver.

The largest gain on third down came against Minnesota. Maye caught the Gophers with tempo on a third down with five yards to go. Watch the bottom of the screen before Maye snaps the ball as Minnesota doesn’t have any personnel to cover Kamari Morales, which leads to a 55-yard gain and a touchdown on the next play.

Here a look at the game-by-game conversion rates on third down:

# UNC offense on third down by game
  defense           converted attempts  rate
  Minnesota                12       17 0.706
  Appalachian State         8       13 0.615
  South Carolina            8       13 0.615

A 65.1 third down conversion rate is likely not sustainable throughout the season. Carolina’s offense converted around 46 percent of third downs last season, good for 17th across all of FBS.

And while Drake Maye might not be putting up video game numbers¹ so far this season, Carolina is 3-0 headed into conference play.

FBS logs updates

I’m still tracking the length of college football games and any changes to plays, points, and drives here: fbs-logs.blessyourchart.com

This past week I added a teams page and revised the historical numbers. Overall, the changes due to rule changes remains minimal.

Offensive plays per game per team are down about 1.9 plays per game. Points are down 1.2 points per game per offense, and combined drives per game are only down about 0.4 per game.

And yes, the game duration is exact same - 3 hours and 27 minutes - so far.

Next week my plan is to review all the drives from week four. Sort of a week four drives superlatives post², so stay tuned.

Random recommendations

Here are a few data projects, articles, or interviews that have caught my attention over the past week or so.

evollve.net: this is like kenpom, but for volleyball. It’s got a treasure trove of data on NCAA teams, and it’s built by Mike Beuoy, Calvin Wetzel, and Aaron Barzilai. You may know Beuoy from his work at inpredictable.com.

softballstatline.com: data project from Tyson King. It’s provides historical NCAA softball team, player, and coaching information. Big fan of any projects that take all of the useful data from NCAA stats, and present it in a much easier format³.

An ode to the newspaper sports section: In the Washington Post, Barry Svrluga writes about how the NY Times will no longer have a sports section. It’s a bit depressing, and this line really jumped out to me:

Pro teams have been in the business of generating their own content for more than a decade now, and some of it — behind-the-scenes videos in particular — can be moving. But it’s not critical — ever. That’s a loss.

ESPN, cable & future of sports television: An interview from Joe Ovies with Stratechery's Ben Thompson about the future of sports and television. Also, somewhat equally depressing and fascinating conversation. Found myself wanting to listen to this one again, especially thinking through the discoverability problem.

---

Thanks for reading this far, and please subscribe for free below to receive any new posts:

1. Drake Maye has thrown more career touchdowns (43) than Phil Jurkovec (41) in 143 fewer pass attempts. Jurkovec is 23 years old playing for his third collegiate team, and likely will be under center at Pitt this week.

2. Big fan of Brian Fremeau’s work and posts like this one after each week. Going to try to share some of the sicko drives or compare game durations next week.

3. I want to build something like this for the NET rankings during basketball season. Since they update daily, show the changes each day and summary of how wacky it can get.