[Gargamel]

Aight....



In American Hand Egg, when a team gains control of the ball, they have 4 attempts to move the ball at least 10 yards (about 10 meters). If they successfully move the ball 10 yards within those 4 tries, and have not scored, they get another 4 tries. And so on.



If, after 4 tries, they have not moved the ball 10 yards, the opposing team gains control of the ball where it lies. And since a team usually starts from within their half of the field, that would make it easy for the opposing team to score. So, at any time they feel they cannot earn those 10 yards, a team may elect to kick the ball away to force the other team to start farther down the field.


Each try is called a 'down'. Usually a team will kick the ball (punt) on fourth down. So that really only gives them 3 real downs to move the ball 10 yards. The ability to move the ball past the 10 yard mark on third down and get a new set of downs, is called a "third down conversion".



Usually by the time the team gets to 3rd down, they are fairly close to having moved the ball 10 yards, so 3rd down conversions is a decent statistic when looking at the offense's effectiveness.



A team with a high 3rd down conversion rate stays on the field longer, increasing their chances of scoring. While a team with a low rate, the opposite is true.