Here is the link to the scoring by quarter.

https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/stat/opp-4th-quarter-points-per-game

To save you time, we gave up

Q1: 4.5 pts

Q2: 8.2 pts

Q3: 5.4 pts

Q4: 8.2 pts

To me I don't think teams called off the dogs early in many cases. Perhaps Wisconsin and MSST, but other than that I just don't see it in the numbers. Teams that really took our defense to task were the teams that could RUN on us e.g. LSU and Wisconsin. Neither of these teams needed to pass really, and that was all game long. So they may have called of the dogs by passing a bit. I would be happy to reassess my position if someone showed me actual numbers, in my mind we were not that far behind most of the time, certainly not enough for a team to try to run out the clock early in the 4th. Again, I am open to this if there are numbers.

I agree with your assessment that we were very vanilla and had a poor "Havoc" score. I think this is the biggest difference from 2016 to 2017. In spite of this, I am arguing we did okay otherwise. I think our scheme was deliberately conservative, I don't know why. This scheme will look better in some categories and worse in others. For example, we were pretty good at not giving up the big play, but fairly poor at giving up medium range passing plays.

Where I disagree with many on the board is about the slow pace of play. This does not matter. Both teams get the same number of possessions (give or take one). The team that scores a higher percentage of the time wins. Of course you need to consider TDs vs field goals, but in general I really like the TD/Drive ratio to look at the effectiveness of a defense. The only real disadvantage to a slower pace of play is that it makes coming from behind more difficult if a team is behind by multiple scores. However, if a team is down multiple scores in a slow pace of play game then that means the other team has  a much higher score/drive ratio. If our defensive score/drive ratio is decent, and we are still behind multiple scores, it is really telling of a very poor offense.

One area where my argument may be weak, is if you factor in field position. I would need to look at some numbers to know...maybe another night.