Room for statistical improvement - Defense

[Louie and Bouie]

I like statistical analysis and thought I would share some statistics with the board on Defense and Offense during the bye week as I find it interesting. I am not going to post my analysis or thoughts on improvement in this post and simply will post the numbers at this time. Would like to see discussion on these points from those so inclined.

Defense - The defense has been phenomenal for a majority of the season and I think it is safe to say they have exceeded everyone's expectations to this point in the season. For a substantial majority of the time, they have held up their end of the bargain. They are Top 25 in the country in many meaningful statistical categories and are a major reason we are .500 at this time. Below I include areas that have been statistically lacking to this point in the season (80th or below national rank) and there is room for improvement.

1. Sacks - In pass attempts per sack we rank 120th in the nation with one sack every 28.40 attempts by the other team (1.25 sacks per game).

2. Interceptions - In % of pass attempts intercepted we rank 113th in the frequency of pass attempts resulting in an interception (1.5% of pass attempts).

3. Turnovers - We are 108th in the nation in % of possessions with a defensive turnover (7.6% of possessions result in a turnover).

4. TD of 20+ yards per possession - We are 93rd in the nation in giving up chunk TD's of 20 yards or more per possession (9.3% of possessions).

Its a pretty short list of the statistical bad for the defense to this point. Pretty amazed myself after such a rough year last year and the strength of schedule we've faced.

I will do the offense in a separate post/heading.

 

[upperdeck]

we seem to drop the 2-3 bad passes that we cause every game. lets hope when we get Coleman/Black back the pass rush goes up a tick. Miami went 5 wides to try and limit our Blitz packages.

 

[anomander]

It's crazy that we have been so competitive while consistently losing the turnover battle, usually by a wide margin. I'm a firm believer in those things evening out. We have had our opportunities. It just makes it more likely to happen down the stretch. Ending up on the +ev side of the turnover battle could be a major contributing factor of going 4-0 to close the year.