defense was borderline atrocious when it counted. In many games, the other team took their foot off the gas pedal and our defensive statistics improved because of it.

LSU: our defense forced a whopping two punts, no turnovers. Our defense was truly terrible.

Utah: I thought our defense played well against Utah, but I just went back and counted, and it looks like Utah had six penalties that erased first downs that then led directly to a punt within two plays. So I'm not sure the defense gets credit for that.

Wisconsin: two punts, both in garbage time. Wisconsin moved the ball at will, even with their 6th and 7th string RBs running up the gut for most of the second half. As bad as the LSU game was defensively, this game was worse.

USU: it's hard to tell how good our defense was because they gave up so many points on short fields. Look at USU's scoring drives: 9 plays - 75 yards; 2 plays - 43 yards; 4 plays to get into FG range before half expired; 4 plays - 9 yards for FG; 5 plays - 41 yards. So statistically, our defense had a decent game against USU, but who is to say USU wouldn't have driven the length of the field had they been forced to.

BSU: we forced three punts

MSU: we forced three punts, two of them in garbage time.

ECU: we forced three punts, two of them in garbage time.

So in our first seven games against FBS competition, our defense had five TERRIBLE games and two games that were statistically respectable but come with big question marks.

And then 'yes', the defense finished strong against the following top-ranked offenses: SJSU, Fresno, UNLV, UMASS, and Hawaii. The reality is that all five of these offenses were bad, but were especially bad at throwing the ball, which happened to be where we were truly abysmal. So our defensive stats benefited tremendously from the end-of-season schedule.