Calculating football efficiency is important metric for understanding how your team if performing. If this is important for you, and you do not have an easy way to do it, keep reading for a link to an Excel file to help you with those calculations.
Typical ‘efficiency by down’ metrics for offense are…
- 1st Down: Gain 4+ yards
- 2nd Down: Gain half the yardage needed
- 3rd Down: Get a first down
- 4th Down: Get a first down
For the defensive side, a goal might be to hold an offense to 3 yards or less on 1st down.
Here is a great read from Advanced Football Analytics with tons of details for those that want to go deep on the subject.
Hudl will calculate efficiency for you, but only if you send it to Hudl’s data entry staff as explained here. Here is a page where Hudl explains how to use the EFF column in a custom report to get some level of efficiency metrics. If this meets your current needs, then awesome. You will not need my Excel file below. 🙂
What if you want a quick way to calculate efficiency by all downs in a game or multiple games? Is your next opponent more efficient on first downs on runs out of 3×1 or 2×2? Do you want to dive in at 4 or 5 levels deep vs 2 levels? Those items are not trivial to calculate so I may have something to help you.
I have created an Excel file that can help you calculate efficiency easily and it is located here on Etsy. You basically need to copy your play data into this Excel file and then it will compute a Summary table and some charts to show you the Efficiency by down and overall. You have to upload a minimum of three fields for 1) Down 2) Distance 3) Yards Gained. It can hold up to 10,000 plays.
I know there are some coaches across all levels that spend a lot of time after games doing these calculations. I hope this can give you some time back in your evening for family time or some well-deserved rest. 🙂
If you have ideas for other time saving templates or calculation engines please reach out to me!
Thanks for reading!
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