things. First, I agree completely that we played a bend don't break defense. But I come to the complete opposite conclusion. The problem with the bend don't break defene philosophy, specifically for last year, is that you need an offense that can put up points in order for this to be a viable option for winning games. We would get down early and we would stay behind, all the while the defense would allow the other team to slowly trudge down the field and eventually the other team would score three to seven points half the time. But because our offense was so slow, and because we forced the other team to take so many plays to get down field, the clock would burn up, so while we kept the point total low, we shot ourselves in the foot with ever clock burning drive.

Obviously, time of possession is hurt by our terrible offense, but we were 112th in the league for time of possession. (teamrankings.com). We could not get the ball back. We were also 81st in turnovers gained. Worse still, our havoc ranking was 115th in the nation. (see footballstudyhall.com). By comparison, 2016 our havoc ranking was 33rd. And under Bronco's bend don't break of 2015, 42nd. To make matters worse, the other team never had to punt. Opponent 3rd down completion was at 41.07%, basically just throw the ball to any slant route over the middle and you get a first down. This put us at 82nd. If we did manage a stop, then they should just go for it on fourth because our opponent 4th down completion rate was 57.14%, good enough for 88th place. Together that gives us a 25.26% chance of actually getting a stop between the two downs. 

So, if you never get off the field, then it doesn't matter that you did not give up very many points.

Your argument that S&P+ rank of 45th means our Passing S&P+ of 98th didn't hurt us too much, doesn't work in my opinion. Because total defense S&P+ is just a scaling of our total points allowed. Essentially, you are using the point totals to determine whether the our pass defense hurt us. But if we can't get a stop or a turnover and they slowly take up the whole clock, then that is where the pass defense hurts us, not on the scoreboard.

Your argument that we didn't allow them to score at a high percentage is also hurt by the fact that even though we finally stopped them in their red zone and they didn't score, they still burned up the clock getting into the red zone.

I tried to look at your points by quarter link, but it sent me to this years projected win totals. The reason I wanted to see the numbers instead of the rank is because your stat doesn't measure whether the other team is burning up the clock or not. To measure whether another team is winning you could look at points rank per quarter if you look at both offense and defense. I looked up the S&P+ for offense and defense:

       Off. Rk    Def. Rk

Q1     99          39

Q2     93          87

Q3     124        63

Q4     98          45

www.footballstudyhall.com/pages/2017-byu-advanced-statistical-profile

So according to S&P+ our fourth quarter D was actually not bad, but our mid game D was awful. So by halftime we were most likely losing, and by the end of the third the other team had their backup slowly plodding down the field.

Holistically, the defense numbers looked good for the purpose of total defense rankings, but the bland, no havoc, system that was designed to always slowly bend down the field was a part of why our offense was never given enough opportunities to mount a comeback. The philosphy would have been middle of the pack if our offense wasn't the worst ever, but that defense was designed to make the defense not look too bad inspite of all the losing. It was not designed to help us win, and for that reason, I hated it.

I would also be interested in knowing if there is a stat out there that measures how often we allowed opponents to score directly after we scored, because I feel like that happened a lot last year. We would score and look like we were going to maybe make a comeback and the defense would allow the other team to score on the very next drive.

Also, a bend don't break does not have to create a terrible passing S&P+ according to football outsiders I have found the passing S&P+ for BYU all throughout Bronco's bend don't break years (and there were plenty of years I didn't like our secondary under Bronco)

2011: 63rd (Jaime Hill as D coordinator, I think?)

2012: 14th

2013: 33rd (Nick Howell 1st season as D coordinator)

2014: 79th (Nick Howell 2nd season as D coordinator)

2015: 49th

2016: 77th (Tuiaki with Nacua...granted, freshman corners)

2017: 99th (Tuiaki without Nacua...sophmore corners)

A bend don't break can still have good pass coverage, this defense did not.

Anyway, would love to hear your responses to each of these. Sorry it is so long.