possession is much more directly controlled by your offense than your defense.
We got the ball as many times as the Campbell fighting Camels did against CCU and came away with no more points than they did. Troy (who scored ONE TD against our defense that same year) scored way more points against CCU with the same resources of possessions.
Our defense didn’t play great, but they played better than any other defense CCU played that year, and did it with less prep time against a unique triple-option-spread.
Our offense played worse than most of the average sunbelt teams did against CCU.
If our offense was paired with any of those other defenses, and played the same, they’d still lose, but by more.
If our defense was paired with the offense of App State, or the Rajin’ Cajun’s, or Troy, or Kansas etc… and played the same, they would have won.
The defense played much better than the offense did.