It seems to me that the prevailing school of thought on the board is that Tuiaki, while frustrating, generally keeps opposing offense's points down and keeps us in the game. Those of you that say "Oh, Tuiaki held them to 19 when they average 30" fail to see the bigger picture.

When one looks at yards or points per game, you see a decent performing unit. We also don't seem to have that many yards ourselves. The reality is that our defense is struggling by almost every single advanced metric.

Defensive Drive Efficiency (DDE) attempts to gauge how many points a defense saves each drive compared to an average unit. We rank 72nd nationally.
Defensive Available Yards (DAY) measures how many total yards an opposing team gains that are available each drive. We rank 101st nationally.
Defensive Yards Per Play (DPP) just measures how many yards opposing offenses gain each play. We rank 63rd nationally.
Defensive Touchdown Rate (DTD) measures how many opposing drives end in Touchdowns. We rank 55th nationally.
Value Drive Rate (DVD) measures how your defense impacts field position. We rank 90th nationally.
Defensive First Down Rate (DFD) measures how many opposing drives get at least one first down. We rank 111th nationally.

You add it all up, and we rank 62nd in (DFEI). This value attempts to rank overall defenses.

One can tell just by looking at these stats that we do our best to limit yards and touchdowns. We give up a lot of yards, but we do a decent job of holding up. So why do the results seem ok from a points and yards perspective overall? Because we limit possessions.

Arizona got 11 possessions.
Utah got 10 possessions.
ASU got 10 possessions.
USF got 8 possessions.
USU got 11 possessions.
Boise got 11 possessions (one extra because Lopini fumbled kickoff).
Baylor got 10 possessions excluding 2 kneel downs at the end of each half (They also got an extra one because the onside kick)
WSU got 8 today excluding their first half kneeldown.

The average amount of possessions in a college game today is 12. We've never once had an opponent get there. To put this in perspective, I looked at 3 games from 2014, at the height of GFGH.

Texas had 16 possessions.
Houston had 13 possessions.
Utah State had 14 possessions.

By limiting the amount of possessions we are keeping an extremely explosive offense (OURS) on the sideline. We rank 15th overall in OFEI. Excluding defensive and special teams touchdowns, you have to have the ball to score. We also make it so that our offense has to go much further than usual to score.

For context on our DFEI by year:

DFEI by Year
2020 - 9
2019 - 66
2018 - 59
2017 - 105
2016 - 34
2015 - 39
2014 - 64
2013 - 30
2012 - 25
2011 - 46
2010 - 50
2009 - 20
2008 - 25
2007 - 25