There have been plenty of struggles in 2023, particularly on offense. Our own Alex Kozora pointed out recently, that Pittsburgh’s offense is 31st in time-of-possession, 31st in plays, 30th in yards, and 31st in points. Today, I wanted to look at third-down specifically around the NFL on offense/defense, with the hopeful goal of finding important info to improve on the money-down.
Let’s start with third-down offense, on all run/pass plays using expected-points-added/play (EPA = measures the impact on the scoring potential of the drive):
From an EPA perspective, Pittsburgh ranks 26th. We can see they were well below average in 3/7 games, going 1-2 in those contests.