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The Big Twelve is causing a stir with their high-powered offenses, but recently the point has been brought up that maybe they just don't play defense in the league like they used to. And no, they're not just pointing at Nebraska.
Instead, they're talking about the current league powers, Missouri, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma State; even defense-minded Bob Stoops' Oklahoma and #1 Texas.
While the Tigers, Red Raiders, and Cowboys have rarely been known as defensive stalwarts, The Sporting News reports that the Sooners don't seem to be up to their normal standards on D, and no less a football authority than the Wall Street Journal notes that Texas ranks only 43rd in total defense.
So what is the verdict on the Big Twelve? Is it, like the WSJ asserts, a paper tiger league where offenses are taking advantage of lax-to-non-existent defenses and soft scheduling, ready for a huge wake-up call come bowl season? And what is the proper way to measure whether a team can play defense?
The answer to the last question is certainly not to look at the NCAA's total defense rankings. These rankings are made simply by adding up all yards yielded all season, and dividing by the number of games. This gives you raw totals which say nothing about the teams you've faced. Let's look at Texas, ranked #43 by the NCAA, and quoted by the WSJ as evidence of the conference's lack of quality, and note the rank of their opponents using the comparable NCAA offensive stats:
Texas Longhorns: Defensive rank #43 (source NCAA)
Opponent Offense rank (NCAA)
Florida Atl. # 67
UTEP # 56
Rice # 16
Arkansas # 66
Colorado #101
Oklahoma # 4
Missouri # 5
Oklahoma St # 8
The Longhorns may have played an pretty easy pre-conference schedule, but it was filled with teams that had average offenses for the 120 Division I-A universe, and one, Rice, that has a top 25 level offense (even if their defense is bottom 25 level).
And once in the conference itself? Colorado was by far the worst offense they faced at #101, then they took on, back-to-back-to-back, the #4, #5, and #8 offenses in the country, according to the NCAA stats.
It should come as no surprise that if you correct for the offenses of their opponents, Texas has a defensive ranking much better than 43rd. In fact, they rank #8—top ten in the country—when this correction is applied. Below are the top defenses, based on total yardage yielded (corrected for opposition) as of Sunday:
Rank Team Rec Total [rank] Rush [rank] Pass [rank]
1. TCU 8-1 215.3 [ 1] 34.6 [ 1] 180.7 [ 20]
2. Southern Cal 6-1 218.2 [ 2] 83.0 [ 6] 135.1 [ 2]
3. South Carolina 5-3 233.1 [ 3] 84.6 [ 8] 148.4 [ 3]
4. Alabama 8-0 263.9 [ 4] 60.8 [ 3] 203.0 [ 50]
5. Ohio State 7-2 265.8 [ 5] 109.0 [ 22] 156.8 [ 6]
6. Florida 6-1 273.2 [ 6] 99.3 [ 17] 173.9 [ 13]
7. Utah 8-0 274.7 [ 7] 85.4 [ 9] 189.3 [ 33]
8. Texas 8-0 277.0 [ 8] 60.8 [ 2] 216.1 [ 73]
9. Tennessee 3-5 286.0 [ 9] 98.7 [ 16] 187.3 [ 29]
10. Auburn 4-4 297.6 [ 10] 109.8 [ 25] 187.7 [ 30]
This is a much better way to rank defenses that to simply look at how many yards they've yielded per game.
Yardage doesn't tell the whole story, of course; some teams give up a lot of yards but have stingy red-zone defenses, or create a lot of turnovers that end drives. This shows up better in the scoring defense rankings:
# Team rec Offense Defense
1. Southern Cal 6-1 41.02 [ 9] 4.67 [ 1]
2. Florida 6-1 43.95 [ 5] 10.33 [ 2]
3. Texas 8-0 45.84 [ 4] 10.64 [ 3]
4. TCU 8-1 29.39 [ 41] 10.69 [ 4]
5. Ohio State 7-2 29.15 [ 43] 10.74 [ 5]
6. Penn State 9-0 43.33 [ 7] 10.83 [ 6]
7. Iowa 5-3 27.69 [ 54] 12.92 [ 7]
8. Wake Forest 4-3 19.67 [ 99] 12.94 [ 8]
9. Boise St 7-0 28.39 [ 49] 13.53 [ 9]
10. South Carolina 5-3 23.63 [ 70] 14.45 [ 10]
...and here we see that Texas is 3rd in the nation in scoring defense—when corrected for opposition. If uncorrected, Texas ranks only 28th, which is again, very unrepresentative when you consider they just held teams that average 48, 47, and 44 points to 35, 31, and 24.
So how about Oklahoma, and the rest of the league? Here are are the adjusted defensive rankings for each Big 12 team in total yardage and total scoring defense.
Big 12 North rec yard rnk score rnk
Missouri 6-2 # 44 # 21
Kansas 5-3 # 65 # 66
Nebraska 5-3 # 54 # 34
Colorado 4-4 # 26 # 41
Kansas State 4-4 # 93 # 81
Iowa State 2-6 # 91 # 96
Big 12 South rec yard rnk score rnk
Texas 8-0 # 8 # 3
Texas Tech 8-0 # 13 # 16
Oklahoma 7-1 # 64 # 35
Oklahoma St 7-1 # 42 # 14
Texas A&M 3-5 #108 # 99
Baylor 3-5 # 87 # 72
So what should we conclude? First it's clear that Texas is certainly playing great defense and using them as an example of the Big 12's poor defense is flawed reasoning. And even Texas Tech is playing strong defense, both yardage-wise and scoring-wise.
Oklahoma's defense is somewhat suspect, as many have been pointing out. They rank even lower in yardage when adjusted for their schedule (which includes Washington and Baylor in addition to the tough defenses of TCU and Texas). Their problem is mainly against the pass, where they rank an abysmal 95th. But teams have less luck turning this yardage into points, as they are 35th in scoring defense. Likewise Oklahoma State, which ranks 42nd in yardage but a strong #14 in scoring defense. Again, all of these rankings are adjusted for the offensive capabilities of their opponents.
The rest of the league is somewhat soft to downright porous. Missouri isn't bad overall, ranking 21st in scoring defense. Nebraska and Colorado are respectable, too. But Kansas' defense is average at best, while Kansas State, Iowa State, Texas A&M, and Baylor rank quite low on a national scale, let alone against their BCS-conference brethren.
So there's clearly a mixed verdict concerning the Big 12, but the point of its accusers was not that the league was weak at the bottom. Certainly, the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, and especially this season, the Pac Ten, can't boast a strong league top-to-bottom. Even the SEC has several dogs in 2008. The WSJ article was complaining primarily about the conference's top tier:
The Big 12, which boasts four top-10 teams in the new Associated Press poll, cannot account for a single defense among the nation's top 40.
And clearly that statement has been put to shame. By the standards they are quoting—yardage—two of those teams are in the top 20 in real defensive yardage. Using adjusted scoring defense as the metric, all four are in the top 40.
And as Casey Kasem would tell you, having four Top 40 hits is a pretty impressive thing.
excellent rebutal to the wall street journal aritcle. why are they writing about sports anyway they should be paying attention to the stock market falling into the shitter
Posted by: B12 fan | October 27, 2008 at 09:11 PM