I posted about this previously. The most important metric for a defense is getting stops: punts, turnovers, turnover on downs.
In my opinion all other metrics can be skewed a bit. Like scoring defense. We typically rate high there because we don’t give up a ton of points. But the reason we don’t give up a ton of points is because we give up long drives on defense that limit possessions.
The problem is, when you let the other team score on say 50% of their possessions that really makes it hard to win.
This year our defense stop rate (before the last two games) was 59%. Giving up 2.32 points a drive. That ranked us 91st out of 130 teams.
The Georgia Southern game we did well. Only allowing 3 scores out of 10 drives. So a stop rate of 70%. Allowing 1.7 points per drive.
The USC game we did poorly. Allowing 6 scores out of 11 drives. A stop rate of 45%. Allowing 2.81 points per drive.
When you’re stopping the other team less than half the time, with limited possessions, that puts a lot of pressure on the offense.
For the most part, our offense has been really efficient this year. Hence why we are 10-2.
As others have mentioned, in previous years when our offense was bad and in bottom 3rd coaches were fired and things were changed up. Why hasn’t that happened with the defense?
Personally, as the metrics show, our scheme is below average and should be changed. It also fails the eye test. As others have posted earlier. In almost all other advanced defensive metrics we are well below average.
If we want to continue the amazing past two seasons as we move to the B12 we are going to need a defense that doesn’t rank in the bottom 3rd in getting off the field.
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