A look at the Gators' offense on 1st and 2nd down

Samantha Harrison / Alligator Staff Third down may be the “money down,” but what about the first two downs?

I’m not sold on teams being “good” on third downs. I don’t think that depending on keeping drives alive by converting on third down often is a good, repeatable way to effectively move the ball downfield.

To put it another way, bragging that your team is great on third down might also be saying that your team isn’t good enough on first and second down.

So, I decided to take a look at how the Gators performed on offense on first and second down, or what I’ll refer to as “early downs.” To do this, I’ll once again use Expected Points Added (EPA), which basically uses a variety of factors…