First of all, I want to credit u/NBC7x for coming up with the name. I made a post last week about this concept, but I’m reintroducing it here from a different point of view.

Have you ever watched a game where a team seems to purposefully run a “bad” play on 3rd down that leaves them just short of getting a 1st down? Well sometimes, it’s simply poor play calling or poor execution. But more often now than ever, teams call 3rd down like they do 2nd down, knowing they’ll go for it on 4th if they are close enough.

So what I came up with is called the Drive Continuation Rate (DCR). I’ve just added a team’s successful 4th down conversions to their 3rd down conversions, the divided by their 3rd down attempts. Here’s where every team ranks:

Rank Team 3DAtt 3DConv 4DConv DCR
1 Philadelphia Eagles 137 66 13 57.7%
2 Buffalo Bills 133 64 6 52.6%
3 Dallas Cowboys 141 66 7 51.8%
4 Detroit Lions 137 58 12 51.1%
5 Green Bay Packers 138 60 10 50.7%
6 Minnesota Vikings 150 62 14 50.7%
7 Los Angeles Chargers 139 60 10 50.4%
8 Kansas City Chiefs 129 59 5 49.6%
9 Chicago Bears 146 63 9 49.3%
10 San Francisco 49ers 106 47 4 48.1%
11 Houston Texans 137 60 5 47.4%
12 Baltimore Ravens 139 62 3 46.8%
13 Carolina Panthers 145 54 13 46.2%
14 Los Angeles Rams 135 55 7 45.9%
15 Atlanta Falcons 140 58 6 45.7%
16 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 138 56 7 45.7%
17 Indianapolis Colts 143 56 8 44.8%
18 Miami Dolphins 107 41 5 43.0%
19 Washington Commanders 142 53 8 43.0%
20 New Orleans Saints 148 54 8 41.9%
21 Denver Broncos 123 47 4 41.5%
22 Jacksonville Jaguars 131 46 7 40.5%
23 Las Vegas Raiders 132 43 10 40.2%
24 Arizona Cardinals 136 48 6 39.7%
25 Cincinnati Bengals 129 46 5 39.5%
26 Tennessee Titans 121 40 6 38.0%
27 New England Patriots 132 45 5 37.9%
28 New York Giants 165 51 11 37.6%
29 Pittsburgh Steelers 136 47 4 37.5%
30 Cleveland Browns 153 50 7 37.3%
31 Seattle Seahawks 123 39 6 36.6%
32 New York Jets 131 30 10 30.5%

So if a team failed on 3rd down, but then was successful on 4th, I’m counting that as a successful drive continuation attempt. However, if a team failed on 3rd down, then failed on their 4th down attempt (or didn’t go for it all), I’m counting that as a failed drive continuation attempt.

I know this doesn’t account for every situation. For example, a team down 1 point with 20 seconds left and the ball on their opponents 10 yard line will likely “fail” on 3rd down by simply running to the preferred hashmark of their kicker and then make a game winning kick as time expires. In this specific scenario, I’ve counted that as a failed drive continuation attempt for a team that executed a game winning play.

For the most part though, this gives you a good overall look at how good/bad teams are at keeping drives alive on the final play of a set of downs where they plan on turning the ball over to the other team if their play is not successful.