As slow as things are, I thought it might be a good time to address some of our shortcomings on defense by comparing past seasons. 2004 was a championship season but '05 and '06 were very good statistically which is why I am not so bent on numbers however sometimes they provide a pattern. We have discussed the falloff in quality depth, injuries and poor recruiting practices, even poor tackling and special team nightmares among other things. I realize it isn't pretty (the chart nor the past few seasons) but I have boldfaced or underlined some numbers that stand out to me and leave some comments that might spark some conversation.
Year '04 '05 '06 '07 '08
RECORD 13-0 9-3 11-2 9-4 5-7 8-5
Scoring PPG 11.3 15.5 13.9 16.9 18.0
27.5 Scoring Games-Pts 13-147 12-186 13-181 13-220 12-216
13-3581st Dns Rush-Pass-Pen. 77-93-17 81-97-15 94-106-19 87-99-21 85-101-18 109-127-31
Rush Yds./Attempt 3.28 3.52 3.72 3.59 4.09
4.12
Rush Atts-Yds-Tds 413-1354-4 396-1395-11 434-1614-8 452-1621-13 408-1667-7 493-2033-2
Passing Yds 2255 2388 2186 2252 2146
2834 Total Off Yds/Play 4.6 5.0 4.9 4.5 4.9
5.2 Punt Returns-Yards/Return 6.39 10.15 9.83 6.50 7.04
12.92Kickoff Rets-No-Yds-Tds 33-692-0 37-777-0 13-277-0 55-1166-0 39-838-0
69-1624-1 INT Rets-Yds-Tds 9-118-0 8-88-0 10-134-1 15-122-1 13-123-0 9-77-0
Fumbles-No-Lost 15-9 22-7
25-15 23-10 20-7 15-8
Penalties Against No-Yds
80-686 67-538 72-595 80-619 74-568
97-847 Red Zone Success % OP/AU N/A N/A 64.71/86.67 74.36/83.67 71.88/57.14
86.0/95.12We were spoiled by John Vaughn's ability to put it in the endzone. Remember the wacky short kick-off experiment that followed?
Tray Blackmon averaged a career high of 5 tackles/game in 2007, the same season Josh Tompson and Zac Etheridge led the team in stops. Etheridge led the team in '08 as well.
Turnover margin, sacks and tackles for loss are important on a individual game basis but are misleading at the end of the season: In 2006 we had a +5 with 29 sacks for 190 yards at 2.23 yards per sack and 82 tackles for losses of 321 yards at 6.31 yards, whereas in '08 we had a -8 with 22 sacks of 174 yards at 1.69 per and 75 tackles for losses for 250 yards at 6.25/loss. that's not much of a difference considering the records for those seasons and these particular stats do not hold up in several other instances.
Pass ratings by opponents are almost a negligible number as witnessed by opponenent % of 114.99 in '09 or 110.88 in '04.
In 2006, opponents had a high of 115.49% and AU finishes with a record of a record of 11-2.
The penalty yards since 2004 have remained fairly close, usually within a hundred yards but last seasons team had 97 penalties for a whopping 847 yards, nearly doubling that of our opponents who ended up with 59 for 466 yards.
The team seems to do better when there is more balance in team tackles in a given game where an interior defensive lineman will shine with 3 stops/game.
Bynes, Stevens, Thorpe and Bates were the leaders in '09 followed by Etheridge who missed the last four games.