Talking some Defense...

When did I say Tech didn’t win fair and square? This is just more examples of Tech fans, emboldened by such a win, to try to make every Texas fan come off as somebody making excuses. We made mistakes, we made plays, but we ultimately lost. Tech made plays, made mistakes, and ultimately won. That’s football. Your rather silly assertion that your mistakes cost you an “annihilation” is no different than what you just accused me of doing. In fact, I argued that that game actually proved that Tech was NOT an elite team last season. As horrendous as Texas played that first half with a plethora of dropped balls and missed assignments, we would have been killed by a team like USC or Florida. The fact that Tech nearly lost that game, a game at home with the best first half of the Leach era, told me they’d get killed in Norman. When OSU flopped in Lubbock, I was preparing for the massive controversy because I knew Tech had no chance on the road against Oklahoma.

Speaking of which, I’m amused how Tech fans pretend this has never happened before. Tech has upset teams at home before, such as OU the past two times. Mike Leach has never beaten Texas and OU in the same season, and he never will until he learns to prepare your team to play in hostile environments.

You’re merely trying to repeat yourself again. We already know the rankings. The question is how well these rankings give us an idea of the secondary play (after all, it’s not like only people in the back four or five play pass defense). Again I will ask you: For somebody so big on statistics, have you read The Boy’s article? What is your take on it? I never said the typical box score statistics are completely useless; however, they can become useless if divorced from context.

but by looking at statistics as closely as you are, it appears you are grasping at straws to make an argument that your secondary was somehow better than ours when it wasn’t.

This is very curious comment. Are you telling football fans to NOT look at stats closely? Again, I didn’t make The Boy’s statistics. His metrics showed Texas to have not only the top passing defense in the conference, but top five in the country. You can of course differ on his methods, but these are the type of discussions football fans SHOULD have, because a great majority of those “analysts” you talk about frustrate CFB fans everywhere with their superficial analysis and bandwagon talk (I myself don’t 100% buy into The Boy’s rankings, because he doesn’t take into account turnovers as much, and Texas only having six interceptions would certainly drop them if he did). Basically, you’re trying to limit the discussion to NCAA rankings, which are not always the most reliable measure (as you pointed out with Texas’ run defense, and also, I’d like you to answer my question about Colorado). Who’s really fishing here?

Bowl season is proof of that, as well as less than stellar performances defensively against much less than stellar competition in non-conference play.

That’s under the assumption that the bowl season can prove so much, which it can’t. I’ll let that go for another discussion, just to point out that you could probably place more blame on Oklahoma’s and Texas’s offenses than defenses in their respective games.

Furthermore, I again question your concept of “good defense.” Against Rice, Jarret Dillard, a legit WR, got his, and Clements had a decent game. They still scored only ten points and were an atrocious 2-14 on third downs (and 2-6 on fourth downs). They averaged 0.7 yards per rush and 6.3 yards per pass. If you think that’s an example of bad defense, I just have no idea what to say to you. For the record, I’m not bragging we thumped Rice; I’m just refuting the techtom’s notion that the defense did not play well against them. I remember that game and I can point out a lot of defensive mistakes, but overall, we blanketed Rice. UTEP’s numbers look much better, but in their run game and not passing game, which looks worse than Rice. Our defense had mishaps in the first half but came through to deliver a shutout in the second half. Perfect defense? Heck no, and at the second game of the season, I guarantee you that many Longhorn fans were peeved we allowed 4.7 yards per carry to UTEP. Bad defense? I always look for improvement, but I’d typically take giving up only 13 points in a game with a second half shutout. Losing that kind of game would mean our offense ultimately fouled up, not our D.

And looking at common opponents. But again, context matters.

For example, while even Texas’ fans were skeptical we had an invincible run defense, we knew we still had a darn good one, and with Texas snuffing the run against the majority of teams on the schedule, teams obviously simply took to the air. Contrast that to Texas Tech. The best example of this would be Oklahoma, who abandoned the run game when it didn’t work and simply let Bradford loose on our young secondary. Against Tech, OU ran over twice as many times and averaged 5.4 yards per carry, compared to their paltry 1.8 against Texas. Obviously, seeing that kind of success will dictate playcalling, and Bradford still threw for over 300 yards and tossed 4 TDs.

Furthermore, why just total yardage? Why not points against? Why not opponent passer rating? Why not yards per attempt? Why not success rates on third down passing situations, as The Boy tries to measure? Bradford only had to throw 19 times to get to 304 yards, an astonishing 16 yards per attempt. He had a stinking good game against us too, but to get to his yardage, he threw 39 times, for 9.9 yards per attempt.

To add to your final number, why not include this?

Texas gave up: 113/211, 53.6%, 5.6 ypa
TT gave up: 88/134, 65.7%, 7.75 ypa

So against these common opponents, Texas held them TEN percentage points lower on comp% and over two yards less per attempt. If I’m evaluating a defense, if I see that a team has to work that much harder to put up thirty more yards, I know who has the superior defense. You will also find our opponent passer rating down as well.

Does this automatically prove Texas has the better secondary? No, it doesn’t; we had a stellar pass rush that helped out, and one thing TT did do better was get interceptions. But if we really want to evaluate a secondary and a pass defense meaningfully, we have to do more than just look up NCAA rankings and/or total yardage. Football is way deeper than that.