SEC Stats: Defensive Thievery, Week Eight
October 28th, 2009 ║ Posted By: John Pennington ║ Permalink ║ Tags: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
While the goal of every offense is to hold onto the football, it’s the goal of every defense to create turnovers.
We’ve come up with a stat that shows you which SEC defenses are the best at forcing their opponents to make mistakes. Or at least which defenses are most often in the right place at the right time.
Below you’ll see our “Defensive Thievery” stat. We take each team’s total number of defensive snaps and divide that number by their total number of takeaways.
Defensive Thievery
| Rank |
School |
Total Defensive Plays |
Takeaways |
Plays/TO |
| 1 |
Arkansas |
495 |
17 |
29.11 |
| 2 |
Alabama |
504 |
16 |
31.50 |
| 3 |
LSU |
481 |
15 |
32.06 |
| 4 |
Miss. State |
535 |
16 |
33.43 |
| 5 |
Florida |
415 |
12 |
34.58 |
| 6 |
Tennessee |
441 |
12 |
36.75 |
| 7 |
Vanderbilt |
556 |
15 |
37.06 |
| 8 |
Auburn |
575 |
15 |
38.33 |
| 9 |
S. Carolina |
506 |
13 |
38.92 |
| 10 |
Ole Miss |
468 |
12 |
39.00 |
| 11 |
Kentucky |
473 |
11 |
43.00 |
| 12 |
Georgia |
480 |
6 |
80.00 |
Observations:
* It’s interesting that Arkansas, Alabama and LSU all rank in the top four in both Defensive Thievery and Ball Security. That turnover margin helps to explain the success of Bama and LSU, but Arkansas’s numbers are a head-scratcher. A team with a +10 turnover margin should be better than 3-4.
* There isn’t a clear drop-off in this stat until you reach Kentucky and Georgia. The Cats force a turnover just once every 43 plays. But Georgia’s numbers are abysmal. The Dawgs create a takeaway just once every 80 snaps. That’s almost hard to believe. You can call this bunch the Un-Lucky Dogs.
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