Beating a dead horse

BYU's defense is giving up 31.2 points per game this year. If this doesn't change starting next game, BYU is going to have another losing season this year.

Is it?



Are you counting pick-sixes?

Brayden Green wrote:

Is it?



Are you counting pick-sixes?

Unfortunately, the scoring defense stats don't take out td's scored by the opposing defense. Bottom line is, does it matter? The defense sucks, the offense sucks, the coaching sucks, this team sucks. We need change.

(Had some time waiting at the airport)



If we are counting extra points:



Utah - 17 (2 pick sixes not counting against defense)

Tennessee (double OT) - 26

USC (overtime) - 27

Washington - 31 (punt return TD and fumble return TD not counting)

Toledo - 28



So according to this average is 25.8 with two overtime games, which isnt great... some of those scores came from short fields due to turnovers also. Not amazing, but not too far off from what we are used to.

Fine, let's fix it. Does this really make it any better?



BYU, as a team, is giving up 31.2 points per game this year. If this doesn't change starting next game, BYU is going to have another losing season this year.

Taking away defensive scores from the total points allowed by the defense is just making more excuses. It's like saying "if we didn't give up those 7 turnovers per game, we could be pretty good" It's all on coaching. We have a horrible high school level coaching staff that is getting beat by teams like Umass and Toledo.

Naw, I'm not making excuses. I'm just bored at an airport and my mind jumped at the opportunity to problem solve, Haha.



I like it Spiff. Byu *as a team* is playing average football, and needs to do better. One of our main problems (bad decision making leading to turnovers) might be corrected with a personnel change. We'll see.

Win/Loss record not withstanding, I have a hard time calling this team's play average. I could not give this team a C grade this year so far. I give the a solid D+ or so thus far. They are playing below average at this point.

Problem with subtracting out pick-sixes, pointing out OT games, etc., is that we don't have any context for that new number unless you do the same exercise for all the other FBS teams to see whether that new number is even any better in relation to all the other teams.



It's just a gee-whiz number for me.

Fair enough. But it is alarming (to me) that we have had so many defensive touchdowns against so as to lower the entire output by a full TD when subtracted against.



As Sno rightfully points out, it would be better in context to subtract out for all of FBS, but with that Herculean effort not within my current abilities with the data available, I'd just have to go with my gut that it wouldn't be as alarmingly different for another team. Maybe take a small sample size (teams in Utah, and a couple Pac12 teams) and that could be a smaller test-case.

BYU has seemed to suffer a large amount of catastrophic turnovers this year.

Sagarin has BYU ranked #73, which is perhaps slightly below average. C-



v. top-25: 1-2

v. 26-50: N/A

v. 51-100: 1-1

v. 100+: N/A



Wins: #24 USC, @ #84 Tennessee

Losses:#12 Washington, #22 Utah, @ #66 Toledo



Upcoming opponents:



#103 South Florida

#27 Boise State

#33 Utah State

#108 Liberty

#140 Idaho State

#204 UMass

#62 San Diego State



The Colley Matrix has BYU at #82, which is below average. D+



v. top-25: 0-1 (#17 Washington)

v. 26-50: 1-1 (#42 Utah, #50 USC)

v. 51-100: 0-1 (#58 Toledo)

v. 100+: 1-0 (#125 Tennessee)



#112 South Florida

#3 Boise State

#44 Utah State

#66 Liberty

#150ish Idaho State

#145 UMass

#59 San Diego State

ugh.

My "source" on Twitter (Casey Lundquist) give us this great stat, it's part of an upcoming article on @BYU247:



1. BYU has forced 4 “3 & outs” on 59 drives, or 6.8% of drives. That is the worst percentage in FBS college football through 5 weeks. The national average is 23.7%.

mtnradio wrote:

My "source" on Twitter (Casey Lundquist) give us this great stat, it's part of an upcoming article on @BYU247:



1. BYU has forced 4 “3 & outs” on 59 drives, or 6.8% of drives. That is the worst percentage in FBS college football through 5 weeks. The national average is 23.7%.

And yet, I was called out for my post about 3 and outs. I didn't even have the percentages but my eyes were telling me that our 3 and out percentage was horrible.



https://www.cougarcorner.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=24961

What are our numbers now?

We have 15 3-and-Outs and have forced 17 3-and-outs.

The defense is getting off the field the last 2 weeks. Whether it is with 3 and outs or turnovers, that is all that matters to me. I was sick of seeing 90 yard 15 play TD drives by the opponent.