Agree...
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We gave up 32 a game vs sec opponents in 2019. If we only give up 24 this year, arnett deserves assistant coach of the year.
Yeah, 24 ppg would be a tall order. Comparing raw stats year to year isn't necessarily apples to apples for lots of reasons. But generally, since the SEC expanded to 14 teams in '12, a 24 ppg D in conference play would have the average rank of between 6th and 7th in the league. Grantham's 2017 scoring D in the SEC, for instance, was right at 24 ppg and it was ranked 6th. We had a rough season on D the year before Grantham, too, so there's precedent that drastic improvement can be done in a single season. But that's still a high standard.
I'm not sure if I have a goal for raw scoring defense in mind. I'd like to see any signs of improvement, obviously. But with such a lack of returning experience -- as I've harped elsewhere, even before the FSU transfers, we were 113th in FBS in returning defensive production; it's possible that we're bottom 10 now -- even that's going to require some work. Frankly, if Arnett can get us toward the middle of the pack in most defensive categories in the conference, say 10th to 8th (remember we were bottom two or three in most things last year), that'd be a good job. Anything on top of that is gravy.
Without looking in detail as to who is bringing back what, I think we could reasonably knock it down to 28 pts a game. I'm not predicting that, but the teams likely to run it up on us this year also ran it up on us last year. Alabama is the only team I see on our schedule that I would expect to score more on us this year than last year. Certainly some other people will, but we will also have some pleasant surprises. Auburn could beat us like a red headed step child and still score two touchdowns less than they did last year. We're replacing UT with Vandy, and adding UGA, who will presumably drive the averages up but weren't big scorers last year and Mizzou, who wsa pretty anemic last year. THrow in the fact that presumably offenses will be alittle more impacted by COVID early in the year, and I think we could get 4 pts better without actually being much better beyond playing hard every play and having an offense that has a pulse.
Just comparing to last year:
UK 13 pts; Not sure what UK is bringning back and whether they have significant turnover where the COVID disruptions would cause them relatively more problems, but going to be difficult to match this, especially being at UK this year.
Auburn 56 pts: Auburn is replacing their OL for the most part, correct? We'll be at home. I would expect us to do better than this, even if we're not competitive.
UT 20 pts: Exchanged UT on the road for Vandy at home. Vandy only scored more than 14 pts in an SSEC game when they lost to LSU 66-38. Ole Miss held them to 6. I think we will probably do as good or better than 20 pts agsint them?
LSU 36: I'm shocked LSU only scored 36 against us last year. I would be surprised if they did better but am expecting them to get close even with Brennan at QB. I think they'll be able to over power us.
A&M 49 - Not expecting to do much better, but not expecting to do worse.
Arkansas - 24 - Not expecting to do much better or worse.
Alabama 38 - I could see them scoring more than this.
Ole Miss 21 - Could go either way. Our offense should be better, so hopefully they make it a little easier on the defense. Not sure what to expect out of Ole miss's offense.
Then we added Mizzou who averaged less than 18 pts a game in SEC last year, and UGA, who average 25.5 an SEC game (excluding SEC championship game) and had highs of 30 (Vandy) and 43 (UT).
If we give up 24 ppg, we will win tons of games. I agree with coach34. I don?t see us giving up less than 30 ppg (assuming we play the 10 game schedule).