It’s just a wee yard. What’s so hard?
I’m sure you’ve been noticing that there have been a few more stops than usual, when it comes to what used to be fairly much a gimme in the CFL – the third and one conversion.
You may also be noticing that, lately, a few more head coaches, always coginizant of the latest trends, have been less ready to trot out the jumbo squads when the spectre of the third and one gamble appears.
On Sunday, Toronto Argonauts’ Head Coach Scott Milanovich called on placekicker Swayze Waters to hit a 22 yard field goal when the team faced a third and one – well, third and just a touch more than one, to be fair – about midway through the first quarter. Even more cautious coaches like Milanovich might have previously felt like going for it at that point, early in the game and a touchdown feeling oh so close.
He did not go for it. Milanovich has often been a “points are points” kind of coach. However, he is also aware that, this season, getting that yard on third down has been harder to do.
“I think the number one thing is teams are getting better at defending short yardage,” Milanovich says, when asked, generally, why the third and one gamble – which used to be not much of a gamble at all – has become more perilous in 2015.
According to numbers furnished by CFL Head Statistician Steve Daniel (I’ve converted some into percentages), offences are succeeding on third and one only 65 per cent of the time this season. That works out to 47 makes and 25 stymies so far and that success rate is well below what we’ve come to expect. The 2013 season saw an 84 per cent success rate, while last year saw teams convert at an 80 per cent clip (the number of times a gamble failed due to a procedure call was not factored into the numbers).
Johany Jutras/CFL
What defences are doing as far as design is a factor. Taking away a coach’s request for a measurement after a second down play has come up short might be too. So might what a few CFL insiders feel is true; that offensive lines are just flat out getting beat more in those situations.
The Hamilton Ticats’ defence – to absolutely no one’s surprise, I would suggest – leads the league in stuffing third down conversions. Opponents have tried it ten times on them this year and been stopped on seven occasions. The Edmonton Eskimos have stopped half the six attempts made on them. At the other end of the spectrum, Calgary’s defence has allowed conversions on all six attempts made against it, while Winnipeg’s has allowed five out of six. Remove Hamilton and Edmonton’s stellar record in this scenario (Only 37.5 per cent of third and one gamble conversions allowed) and you see that the rest of the league is still keeping those conversions down from the norm, though not quite as dramatically, at 73 per cent.
“Schematically, I think defences are better,” Milanovich says. “They’re putting more people inside. You don’t really wanna go outside but you see a lot of teams having to do it on their sneaks now, because everybody’s packed in the middle.”
Linebackers, helping to pack that middle, are a part of the increased success rates in the stoppages. BC Lion Adam Bighill launched himself into the line in a perfectly timed strike against the Saskatchewan Roughriders in Week 3, robbing the Riders of a chance to run out the clock, late in the fourth quarter. Off the turnover, BC kicked a game-tying field goal and went on to win in overtime.
Some of the failures to get that yard, however, come down to no more than offensive line versus defensive line and there is a general feeling that the interiors of offensive lines across the league are simply being out-performed by their defensive counterparts. With fewer quality surges by the O-lines, extraordinary interior defenders like Hamilton’s Ted Laurent and Bryan Hall and Edmonton’s Almondo Sewell and Eddie Steele are winning the battles, robbing sneaking quarterbacks and diving running backs of the room they need to manoeuvre.
If there’s been grumbling by offences over the spots they’ve gotten on failed attempts, it has nothing to do with any changes implemented in game management, according to the CFL’s Vice President of Officiating, Glen Johnson. It’s true that umpires have been moved from the defensive backfield to the offensive backfield, in order to protect them better.
Remember Ben Major being kicked in the head last season? Johnson says it’s an example of why they had to be moved as “probably about 30 per cent of the plays, they, in essence, had to stop officiating to protect themselves.” But, Johnson says, “On third and short, we put the umpire back where he used to be,” so they are in the same position they’ve always been on those gambles.
One change that might just have led to more third and one failures is the stripping of head coaches of their right to call for a measurement. Used to be, they could get one to see if it was just inside a yard to go or a little more than that. With that right being taken away, it is possible that a number of coaches have been caught going on what they thought was inside a yard when it was actually more. Officials now make all the calls on whether there will be a measurement.
Johnson says they are not stingy with those measurement calls. They’ll ask for one “If it’s in one of those situations where it’s critically important for the team to know how far they are,” he explains. “We’re still trying to do the right things in the game to show the coach, like of it’s a foot away as opposed to being a yard away.”
“What we got rid of was, it’s clearly a yard and a coach would just use it (a measurement request) to get a time out,” Johnson says. “Those are the ones that are gone.”
There is just one CFL offence that has converted all of its third and one attempts in 2015. The Ottawa REDBLACKS are perfect, going five for five. If you think going for it is a sign of confidence in your offensive line, Tom Higgins certainly had that in Montreal. The recently fired head coach gambled 17 times – far and away more than the head coaches of the four teams tied for second with eight – and saw his team convert twelve of them, for a success rate of 71 per cent.
That’s six points better than the league average in a season that has seen a yard look a lot longer than it has in recent memory.
