Good interview of Banker about the D and some glaring stats

[lo country]

NU was run on only 379 times last year. The lowest total in FBS. We were 8th in the B1G and 9th overall. BUT when you look at the yards per attempt, we are not near the top and look in depth at TD's, attempts, runs etc....

When teams wanted to run they did and could. 18 rushing TD's allowed, puts us towards the middles of the FBS. Our run D was "good" because teams ran much less against us than their game average. Not saying we didn't "improve", but look into the stats and we were not the run stopping beasts folks make us out to be. 37 runs of 10+, 17 runs of 20+.

In the top 25 rushing D we had the 2nd highest yards per carry and allowed more yards per carry than some teams with a "worse" rushing D..

http://www.cfbstats.com/2015/team/463/rushing/defense/situational.html

http://www.ncaa.com/stats/football/fbs/current/team/24

 

[QMany]

Going from 77th in rush defense at 4.7 ypc to 9th and 3.7 ypc is tremendous progress no matter how you want to spin it.

Going from 4.7 to 3.7 is improvement - though it was almost identical to 2013.

Going from 77th to 9th was mostly a function of how much our opponents ran against us and how good their RBs were.

Going from 5.37 yards per play (50th) to 5.88 (92nd) or 26.4 PPG (60th) to 27.8 (75th) was not tremendous.

 

[The Dude]

Looks like we cut runs of 10+ yards almost in half from the previous season.

 

[ColoradoHusk]

Looks like we cut runs of 10+ yards almost in half.

The defense was gashed plenty of times by long runs, along with giving up huge chunks of yardage in the air.

 

[The Dude]

Looks like we cut runs of 10+ yards almost in half.

The defense was gashed plenty of times by long runs, along with giving up huge chunks of yardage in the air.

See, having so many teams abandon the run against us should be a good thing. Making teams one dementional and trying to beat us through the air should always be priority #1 for any defense. I'm kind of amazed we were so horrid against the pass but managed to not get blown out a bunch of times. I'm truly baffled by that, because that pass defense was the worst I've ever seen.

I think Banker might have the right idea, but is a couple great cornerbacks away from having the defense work the way he intends.

For the time being, for his sake, I hope fixing some of the confusion on the back end between the safeties and corners gives us at least some semblance of a pass defense.

And sure we may have been gashed "plenty of times" on the ground, but we were gashed a lot less than the year prior so it shouldn't be difficult to understand why there's a perception of improvement there.

 

[Mavric]

Looks like we cut runs of 10+ yards almost in half from the previous season.

And we faced about 75% of the rushing attempts. So half of that is "improvement" and half was simply teams not running the ball against us.

But the half that was "improvement" is dependent on not only the number of rushing attempts faced but the quality of attempts. I think about six teams we faced in 2015 were missing their starting RB from 2014 and a couple of those were also missing another back who would other-wise have been a starter. And at least four of those backs are playing in the NFL. So it's hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison.

 

[The Dude]

I just thought it was an interesting stat. In fact, our first 4 years in the Big Ten we gave up an average of 66 10+ yard runs per season. 37 is by far the best number we've posted there in the league. I hope it becomes a trend, along with teams thinking they can't just run over us all day (hopefully not at the expense of a porous pass defense). In fact, I'd take it a step farther and say I hope we play more ball control on offense so opposing offenses get fewer chances in general. That could help the defense tremendously even if it doesn't necessarily mean defensive "improvement" in the sense that you mean. I'd take it.

 

[Bowfin]

Going from 77th in rush defense at 4.7 ypc to 9th and 3.7 ypc is tremendous progress no matter how you want to spin it.

How many of those rushing plays were just nothing more than opposing teams holding on to the ball, keeping it in bounds, and milking the clock for the win? In such cases, a -1 yard rushing attempt is good for padding the defensive stats, but tells a completely different story when one actually sees Purdue or Miami doing it for a good part of the second half.

 

[The Dude]

I don't know. I doubt that's a significant part of it at all.

I think the biggest factor is we played our base set with 3 linebackers in the game more often than we did any of the first 4 years in the league, which obviously helped our run defense, but hurt our pass defense.

And I thought the team just tackled better in general. Although I know that doesn't count on the internet since there isn't a stat for it.

 

[Redux]

I mean, I get that since our passing defense was so soft that teams didn't run as much against us.

But given the fact that we were coming off a regime that let 408 yards get hung on them I think we improved significantly considering it was an ugly transition year. I mean holy hell, it could have been a lot worse considering all the facts.

 

[marko polo]

Looks like we cut runs of 10+ yards almost in half.

The defense was gashed plenty of times by long runs, along with giving up huge chunks of yardage in the air.

See, having so many teams abandon the run against us should be a good thing. Making teams one dementional and trying to beat us through the air should always be priority #1 for any defense. I'm kind of amazed we were so horrid against the pass but managed to not get blown out a bunch of times. I'm truly baffled by that, because that pass defense was the worst I've ever seen.

I think Banker might have the right idea, but is a couple great cornerbacks away from having the defense work the way he intends.

For the time being, for his sake, I hope fixing some of the confusion on the back end between the safeties and corners gives us at least some semblance of a pass defense.

And sure we may have been gashed "plenty of times" on the ground, but we were gashed a lot less than the year prior so it shouldn't be difficult to understand why there's a perception of improvement there.

they only "abandoned the run " against us because it was so pathetically easy to pass, So we don't have a feared run defense and that is not likely to change no matter how you spin it.

 

[Saunders]

Going from 77th in rush defense at 4.7 ypc to 9th and 3.7 ypc is tremendous progress no matter how you want to spin it.

Most of that was simply due to not having a meltdown against Wisconsin, which is in and of itself, an improvement (even if they were a paper tiger last year). Outside of that game, we averaged 3.9 (rounded) ypc, not great, but not horrible.

 

[Saunders]

Looks like we cut runs of 10+ yards almost in half.

The defense was gashed plenty of times by long runs, along with giving up huge chunks of yardage in the air.

See, having so many teams abandon the run against us should be a good thing. Making teams one dementional and trying to beat us through the air should always be priority #1 for any defense. I'm kind of amazed we were so horrid against the pass but managed to not get blown out a bunch of times. I'm truly baffled by that, because that pass defense was the worst I've ever seen.

I think Banker might have the right idea, but is a couple great cornerbacks away from having the defense work the way he intends.

For the time being, for his sake, I hope fixing some of the confusion on the back end between the safeties and corners gives us at least some semblance of a pass defense.

And sure we may have been gashed "plenty of times" on the ground, but we were gashed a lot less than the year prior so it shouldn't be difficult to understand why there's a perception of improvement there.

We didn't get blown out, because we didn't really play any great teams, or great QB's. I mean, they let Mitch Leidner throw for 300. Nine of the first ten QB's we faced threw for over 250 yards, and the only one we didn't (NW), threw for 177 and ran for 126 yards at a 14.0 ypc, and he still ended up at 300 APY...

 

[Redux]

Serious question:

Swap out our schedule for Iowa's last year. What do our records look like?

 

[Saunders]

Serious question:

Swap out our schedule for Iowa's last year. What do our records look like?

Well, we played alot of the same teams, so:

Illinois State - W

Iowa State - W

Pitt - L ? (Better than BYU, on par with Miami)

North Texas - W

Wisconsin - L

Illinois - L

Northwestern - L

Maryland - W

Indiana - L ? (Played Iowa and OSU very tough)

Minnesota - W

Purdue - L

Iowa - L

5-7, maybe 6-6 or 7-5 if we beat Indiana and/or Pitt.