Quote Originally Posted by confucius say View Post
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.
Quote Originally Posted by Coach34 View Post
I dont see any way we give up less than 30 PPG
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.