SEC Stats: Defensive Stinginess, Week Five

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For the past few weeks we’ve brought you two measures of offensive productivity under the banner “Scoring Efficiency.”

You can find our most recent SEC offense rankings right here.

But what if we reverse the processs and apply that method to SEC defensive statistics? 

That’s what we’ve done now.  And we call these two statistics “Defensive Stinginess.”

First, let’s look at what ColdHardFootballFacts.com calls “Bendability.”  The idea meshes with the first of our defensive rankings.

We use a similar method to grade offenses: How many yards must a team travel for every point they score? 

A good, efficient offense should have a low “Yards Per Point” ratio.  On the flipside, a good defense should have a high “Yards Allowed Per Point” ratio.

In other words, a team’s opponents have to work harder for their scores.  A defense might bend and give up yards, but it doesn’t breakd and give up points.

Below are the SEC “Bendability” stats for Week Five:



Yards Allowed Per Point

With our offensive ratings we’ve tried to find a PURE measure of a team’s offensive efficiency by comparing the number of touchdowns scored by a unit to the number of plays they have run.

That works for defenses, too, we just need to reverse the thinking.  Below you’ll see which SEC defenses make their opponents run the most plays for the touchdowns they score:



Plays Per Touchdown Allowed

Observations:

* Florida, Ole Miss, LSU and Vanderbilt rank 1, 2, 3 and 4 in both defensive measures.  Florida was expected to have a dominating defense and they do.  John Chavis was expected to improve LSU’s D and he has (although things looked shaky in Week One).  Ole Miss is the unit that might not belong.  The Rebels have not faced a high-powered or efficient offense yet… but that will change on Saturday.  We’ll know more about the Rebels come Sunday.  As for Vanderbilt, once again Bobby Johnson has a smart, tough team that features zero offense.  Imagine if the Commodores didn’t have a stingy defense.

* Monte Kiffin’s defense at Tennessee doesn’t look too great in the Yards Allowed/Point ratio.  But when you factor in how much time the defense has spent on the field (thanks to a bad offense), the Vols’ numbers look much better.  As you can see in our second chart, only five defenses have been on the field more than Kiffin’s bunch.  But only two defenses have held their opponents to fewer touchdowns. 

* Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas and Mississippi State have the four worst defenses in both categories.  Georgia fans, if you read the messageboards, are not surprised by this.  Arkansas was expected to be poor on defense as well.  Kentucky was effected by the loss of All-SEC defensive end Jeremy Jarmon and will now have to play without both starting corners for at least a week.  The big shock might be in Starkville where Sylvester Croom had — for the most part — been able to piece together stingy defensive units.  That’s not the case so far for the Bulldogs.  Then again, they have faced some high-powered offenses and their own O has put their defense in bad positions via turnovers.