Coaches pick the most important statisticTom Dienhart Rivals.com College Football Senior Writer
Arizona State's Dennis Erickson
"The biggest thing with winning and losing is turnover margin. We lost that last year. With what we do on offense, we may turn it over a little more. So you have to take that into consideration."
Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald
"The tell-tale one for me is turnover ratio.
Nebraska's Carl Pelini
"Lost-yardage plays are huge. These are the things we look at, in addition to points allowed. You have to be great on third downs, so we will look at our defense's third-down success rate, too. Anything under 30 is pretty good. When you start getting 25, 26 percent, you're a damn good defense. No matter how long a drive is, no matter how much success an offense is having, you are going to have two or three opportunities during the course of a drive to get off the field. If you are hitting those 66, 70 percent of the time, you have a great shot of getting the ball back even though you are giving up some yards. We also look at explosive plays vs. lost-yardage plays. We want to have two lost-yardage plays for every explosive play we allow. For us, explosive plays are runs over 12 yards and passes over 17. And turnovers. There was a study years ago in the NFL that I have bought into: If you win the turnover battle, you have more lost-yardage plays than the other team's defense and good starting field position, if you can win two out of three, you win something like 95 percent of your games."
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