Football Defensive Review

In April, Ireviewed the offensive for our football team last year.

I used some measures that I have been noodling around with, trying to create a new statistical look at football, but one that be generated using box scores, and not require play by play analysis.

My conclusion for the offense was that our offense was sixth in scoring in an average conference, and given the marginal numbers, was lucky to be that good. I think you can make a case that for all our bluster, our offensive might was not real. We were the only non-awful team to be below the conference average in passing yards per play and rushing yard per play.

So, let's look at the defense. In this case, I think the storyline is the opposite. The much-maligned defense was actually better than we thought and a little better than its marginal numbers might indicate.

Of course, we are working with averages. We can't forget that while the defense might have performed adequately, there were some late game meltdowns that cost us a chance to play for the MAC Title. At the same time, during those same fourth quarter collapses, the offense was failing to make first downs and we did fail to recover an onside kick against Buffalo. So, the rest of the team wasn't making it easier on the defense.

(Just an aside: remember when we would get the ball with five minutes left and a lead, and you would just know that the game would end with us still in possession of the ball. Sigh.)

OK, so, the baseline to start with is that our defense was fourth in the MAC in points allowed. The conference was not great offensively, but in a relative sense, this is not a terrible number.

Note, that I also looked at this for "true scoring" which removes defensive touchdowns and special teams touchdowns from the analysis, and we were still fourth.

The first thing I looked at what the percentage of plays on which a first down was earned. It just seems logical to me that the first objective every offensive team has in trying to score is to keep making first downs. So, if a team makes a first down on a high percentage of its plays, that's probably a pretty efficient offense. If they are doing that and not scoring, something must be wrong.

The opposite is true for defenses. BG gave up a first down on 29% of its plays, with was sixth in the conference, an OK number, but not outstanding.

Another thing I like to took at is yards per play for running and passing plays, with sacks moved from running to passing. This to me is a key indicator of offensive efficiency. A balanced offense can generate yards either way, even if they use one method more often...ie, a running team that goes over the top when the safeties come in. Similarly, a balanced defense can stop running and passing effectively.

BG was sixth in the conference in stopping the run, which is a pretty solid number. However, we were second in the MAC in yards per play on passing plays. When you put those together, we were one of four teams in the conference to be better than average defensively in yards per play on running and passing.

So, the conclusion is that in a passing league, we were strong against the pass and decent against the run. Still, I don't think we have answered the entire question.

The other thing I like to look at is key plays. In football, some plays are really important, such as third downs and in the red zone. If you are strong on third down defense, that can bail you out, provided that you aren't so bad on first and second down that teams don't need third down.

The Falcons were OK on third down, but not great. We were fifth in third down conversions, and seventh in terms of forcing a third down play.

In the redzone, Bowling Green's success was in not allowing the opportunity in the first place. We were fourth in red zone opportunities per game, fourth in redzone points per game. (And before you ask, we were second in non red-zone scoring, so it wasn't that we were allowing big plays).

When teams got to the redzone, they either got a TD or nothing, or at least more so than the general conference profile. BG was eighth in red zone points per trip but 5th in red zone shutouts, as a propotion of overall trips.

Finally, BG was seventh in turnovers as a percentage of defensive snaps, obviously in the middle of the pack.

So, I guess I would conclude this. BG's defense probably out-performed on points allowed a little bit, but essentially, our bend but not break defense yielded, in the aggregate, decent numbers that I found at least a little surprising.

Built on a strong pass defense, adequate run defense, the Falcons kept teams out of the red zone enough and avoided big scoring plays enough to be an above average defense in the conference.