Thinking about reasons why. Clarification?

by Three D, Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 08:23 (6343 days ago) @ Spesh

When you say, "2nd & 4 or better" by better you mean shorter, correct?

Also, when you say "ND had X opportunities" you mean that there were X times when the down was 2nd, the distance was 4 or better, and also the team had this particular personnel on the field? In other words, there were more than X opportunities for 2nd & 4 or better, but there were X number in Regular.

Was the number of opportunities roughly the same in each season and just distributed across personnel differently, or was there an overall decline in "2nd & 4 or betters" ?

Further, I would want to know what other personnel & formations were used and their frequency under the same situational parameters, so I could determine whether the personnel changed more than the particular run/pass playcall.

Further still, I'd want to look at how the defenses were aligning themselves prior to the snap and whether a pattern of change could be seen from that perspective.

(note, that I'm not asking you to do more work or answer these questions, just things I'd want to look at to be able to understand what was happening).