What is more important for the DEF, total yardage or yards per play?

In Thursday’s blog it was very obvious that among the top offensive teams the yards a team allows per play is more important then the yards per game. When we looked at the poorest offenses there wasn’t the same difference as most of those teams where in the bottom of both rankings.

Today let’s look at if the same hold for the top defensive squads. By looking at the best 13 teams (top 10%) in overall defense Clemson was #1 allowing 261 ypg while Miami, Fl was #13 allowing 329 ypg. The groups combined record was 110-60 giving them a 64.7 win % and +50 wins. Two teams had losing records and 3 finished with 7 wins.

Now lets look at the best 13 teams in terms of fewest yards/play allowed an again Clemson was #1 at 4.0 yds/play. Utah St came in at #13 allowing 4.76 yards/play and combined the group had a record of  116-53 which translates to a 68.6 win % (3.9 higher than ypg) and +63 new wins 13 more than the ypg category.

Let’s continue and see if the poorest defensive squads have similar results. Iowa St allowed an FBS high of 539 ypg and New Mexico St was the 13th worst (Bottom 10%) at 484 ypg. These teams finished with a record of 51-124, which was a 29.1 win%, and 73 net losses.

Now let’s look at the 13 teams that had the highest yards/play allowed and the range went from New Mexico St at 6.51 yds/play to Tulsa which was the highest at 6.95 yds/play. The best defensive teams showed us that the yards/play were more important than the ypg so I expect the poorest defensive teams in yards/play were worse than the ypg group. The correlation was correct as this group had a record of 37-121, which is only a 23.4 win % (5.7 lower than ypg) and the net losses of 84 was 11 more as well.