Scooch
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Remember everyone, defense wins championships...
- Thread starter Scooch
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longislandcuse
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With the two best defenses in CFB, both featuring 3-4 first round picks a piece.
Would've loved to see a game with a healthy Shaq Lawson and Alexander able to continue though. Bad breaks for Clemson.
Would've loved to see a game with a healthy Shaq Lawson and Alexander able to continue though. Bad breaks for Clemson.
longtimefan
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Alabama's biggest edge was special teams.
IthacaBarrel
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HA!!, defense doesn't win much in college football anymore. You just need to try and not give up big plays like Clemson did. bend but don't break, defense in college football is nothing more than to give the offense a break, get a few stops and the longer it takes the offense to score the better.
SWC75
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From my SU Football Preview last August:
"There are 125 Major college teams so the 63rd ranked team is an ‘average’ team. Last year the 63rd ranked scoring team was Rice, which averaged 29 points a game. We’re in an era when to beat an average team you’ve got to score 30 points. If you don’t and still win, you’ve either got a great defense or you were lucky. In Syracuse’s history we’ve had exactly nine teams that averaged 30 points per game. They are: the 1904 team that beat Manhattan 144-0, (and Allegheny and Clarkson by 69-0 each); the 1916 team, who opened their schedule against something called “All-Syracuse", (57-0) and then beat Ohio U., Franklin & Marshall and Susquehanna by a combined 175-0), the 1959 national champions, the undefeated 1987 team, the four Donovan McNabb teams and Ryan Nassib’s senior year, when we finally got the passing game going, (temporarily) .We just had a national championship game between teams that came in with their defenses giving up 22 points a game each. That used to be bad defense. Now it’s national championship defense.
It’s a new era. What is happening now in football is what happened to basketball in the 1940’s, when they started that decade, it was about winning 40-30 games. By the end of the decade, it was about winning 70-60 games and teams that were still trying to win 40-30 games were losing big. In football, we’ve gone from trying to win 21-14 games to trying to win 35-28 games and if we are still trying to win games 21-14, we are going to lose big, too."
"There are 125 Major college teams so the 63rd ranked team is an ‘average’ team. Last year the 63rd ranked scoring team was Rice, which averaged 29 points a game. We’re in an era when to beat an average team you’ve got to score 30 points. If you don’t and still win, you’ve either got a great defense or you were lucky. In Syracuse’s history we’ve had exactly nine teams that averaged 30 points per game. They are: the 1904 team that beat Manhattan 144-0, (and Allegheny and Clarkson by 69-0 each); the 1916 team, who opened their schedule against something called “All-Syracuse", (57-0) and then beat Ohio U., Franklin & Marshall and Susquehanna by a combined 175-0), the 1959 national champions, the undefeated 1987 team, the four Donovan McNabb teams and Ryan Nassib’s senior year, when we finally got the passing game going, (temporarily) .We just had a national championship game between teams that came in with their defenses giving up 22 points a game each. That used to be bad defense. Now it’s national championship defense.
It’s a new era. What is happening now in football is what happened to basketball in the 1940’s, when they started that decade, it was about winning 40-30 games. By the end of the decade, it was about winning 70-60 games and teams that were still trying to win 40-30 games were losing big. In football, we’ve gone from trying to win 21-14 games to trying to win 35-28 games and if we are still trying to win games 21-14, we are going to lose big, too."
SWC go watch the BC-SU 1993 game I linked in my Classic SU games thread that game was the FIRST time Syracuse ever lost a football game when they scored atleast 29 points. Brent Musberger and Dick Vermeil make a huge point about that at the end of that game. It was amazing.
GoSU96
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Those teams don't get to that game without having two of the best defenses this year.
You need to win 14 or 15 games. You can't do it on offense alone.
Clemson had the best combined total offense and total defense ranking this year, 11th on offense and 10th defense and went 14 -1.
Bama was fifth best combined 45th on offense, 3rd defense to go 14-1.
Funny how that works.
SWC75
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I think what we mean is that ":good defense" is defined differently these days. I may be more like basketball where the team that gives up the fewest points, (due to tempo), may not be the best defensive team. Instead, look more to margin of victory and is the defense setting up the offense to score? Alabama certainly stresses defense but they had to win a shoot-out to win the national championship. If they have to have that capability to be successful, so does everyone else.
721Comstock
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/BC fans grimly nod their heads and grumble to themselves...
