C34 and his unbelievably wrong prediction about our D

Quote:

Originally Posted by Homedawg

I'll chime in. I said we were going to be bad on d as well. So he shouldn't be e only guy taking the bullets. Look I saw our offense shred our d In scrimmages....1 on 1. 2 on 2's. Which the latter scared me even more cause you have to have defensive depth and our OL owned our d line. When I saw them. The week before the season the d line started getting pressure more than they were but I was getting that thru reports and wasn't about to change what I saw w my own eyes. I also said all along Arnett was going to be good just had limited personnel. At this point t we have played one good offense, A&M. So we shall see how it ends. Everyone thought our offense was great after one game too. I was also worried th at teams would line up and pound us. Uk couldn't and A&M did they were dumb throwing as much as they did. With all that said, I'll admit we have been better than I every remotely dreamed on defense and clearly, up to this point I was wrong. Hope it stays that way, we clearly we play hard and that's good.

I was also one of the many who thought it'd be a tall task just to keep the defense from regressing even further from Shoop's wreckage last season. Improving substantially wasn't really in the cards from what I understood about how much production we lost.

It's still early. And we've yet to face several really good offenses. But I'll gladly say that, based upon early returns, I was way, way off. You can talk ball control all you want -- and it's good to remind everyone if they had forgotten that Leach's offense is not a hurry-up, no-huddle offense that wears defenses out with tempo -- but the fact is that the defense is just playing much better football than they were almost all of last year and that they're doing it with little-to-no depth and mostly unproven dudes.

Let's look super quickly at numbers. To try to reduce time-of-possession's influence, check out these yards-per-play stats:

Yards per rush allowed - 3rd in the SEC
Yards per pass att. allowed - 3rd in the SEC
Yards per play allowed - 1st in the SEC

That's strong regardless of who you've played or how much your offense holds the ball.

Also, it's not like we're playing our opponents worse than other teams. A&M averaged 6.8 yards per play against Vandy and 7.3 yards per play against Florida. Against Bama, they averaged 5.8. Against us they averaged 5.7. LSU averaged over 7 yards per play against Vandy and Mizzou, but managed roughly 5 yards per play against us. And Kentucky averaged roughly 5 yards per play against Auburn and Tennessee, and 7.6 against U. Miss, but managed only 2.96 against us.

Verification of the early returns comes from the FEI ratings over at Football Outsiders. It's too early for them to post detailed breakdowns, but right now we're 4th nationally among active teams in defensive FEI. (Offense's rank so far? 87th. Yikes . . . .)

Again, this is all very early and teams like Bama, U. Miss., and UGA will test our defense much more than teams like Arkansas and Kentucky. Our success on D will likely regress a bit as the quality of the offenses increases. But barring a complete and total defensive meltdown for most of the rest of the season (especially against teams like Vandy and Mizzou), Arnett's more than earned his paycheck and then some.