Every year I am adding to new features and articles to my College Football Preview and PhilSteele.com and this year for all 124 teams I have added a couple extra columns to the Game-by-Game Stats that you will find on the right hand page for every team. A lot of people have been asking me what those columns stand for and I thought I would explain it further in today’s blog.

During the 2012 season I was wondering how certain offensive and defensive performances that a team had vs a particular opponent stacked up on how the other opponents fared against that team. Not every performance as far as yards gained and given up is created equal due to the quality of opponent played. Let’s face it gaining 300 yards of offense last year vs Alabama’s defense would be far more impressive than gaining 300 yards vs Kansas’ D. So to the right of the net yards and points columns, you will see an offensive vs foe and defensive vs foe numbers. The first # is what that performance ranked compared to every other team their opponent allowed throughout the year (#1 being the best, with #12 being the worst since most teams played 12 games) while the second column contains the number of yards positive or negative against their opponent’s average.

If you need further explanation feel free to check out the June 14th blog.

In yesterday’s blog I took all those averages on offense and combined them to come up with the most impressive offensive teams in the country compared to how they fared against their opponent. Today, I will take all those averages on defense and come up with the most impressive defensive teams in the country compared to how they fared against their opponent.

First, here is a ranking of all 124 teams and how they did.

Defensive YPG Allowed Compared to
Opponent's Offensive YPG Avg

It should come as no surprise that Alabama topped the chart as their defense held foes to 163.9 ypg below their normal average. Florida came in at #2 at 137.2 followed closely by Michigan St and BYU.

Unlike the top offensive teams in this category all of the Top 10 defenses made it to a bowl game and in fact 33 of the top 36 teams were bowl eligible!

At the bottom was Louisiana Tech who was dead last as their defense allowed 128.2 yards more than what their opponents were averaging per game but they still were able to win 9 games thanks to their explosive offense. However, I did find it interesting that along with Louisiana Tech; Arizona, Miami, Fl, Baylor, Duke, Central Michigan and Toledo all won at least 6 games and/or went to bowl games despite having underwhelming defenses in this category.

Tomorrow, I will combine both my offensive and defensive results and give you a look at the overall most impressive teams in the country when it came to yards per game vs their opponents’ averages.