Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Bayareabadger brings up a good point.  S&P+ is a better metric than raw stats.

In 2018, Oklahoma was #84 in S&P+.  That's unacceptably bad, but it's not as bad as the raw stats--including 129th in pass defense--indicated.

Teams that ranked lower in last year's S&P+ that you don't automatically think of as having had "garbage" defenses were Arizona State (86), Purdue (88), Ole Miss (90), UCLA (97), Louisville (99), and Georgia Tech (100).  TCU (16) was the best Big 12 team.

Interestingly, the distance between ratings shrinks when you get to teams ranked low.  There was less distance in the S&P+ ratings between Nevada (S&P+ of 28.0, ranked #63) and Oklahoma (30.0/#84) than there was between Mississippi State (10.5/#1) and Clemson (12.6/#3).  I'm not sure what that means.  Maybe that there were a lot of teams with pretty bad defenses.

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaadef/2018

First couple of drives Louisville moving the ball like they used to. Went straight down the field on ND.

Notre Dame's defense looks pretty weak. The QBs 3 fumbles are the main reason Louisville hasn't scored more.... Also has anyone else every seen a sequence of fumbles on 3 consecutive plays? I sure haven't.

Meanwhile, Louisville's defense doesn't look that great, but they're still getting enough stops to keep the game close. We'll see how the domers do against the rest of the first half of their schedule, but this game looks a lot less dangerous than I was expecting....

My junior year in HS I played in a game where the teams turned it over on 3 consecutive plays.  We fumbled it, the next play I recovered a fumble to get it back (the whole reason I told this story 😉), and we fumbled it back the very next play.

Horns don't play FCS.

Interesting.  How specifically do the advanced stats take into account that Texas is likely playing more high-scoring/high yardage offenses in the B12 than Georgia is in the SEC?

The first part is they're built either on per-play or per-drive data. So that reduces some of the tempo factor. After that, they adjust for opponent quality in their respective metrics. I do not know the finer points of that math, though to a degree I think it's sort of a complex matrix of how did you hold a team below or above its usual output. 

There may have been fumbles on 3 straight plays when I went to the Florida @ Tennessee game, I'm thinking 2002.  Let me check.


Yup...in the rain in Knoxville, UTK fumbled 7 times in the first half, including...
After a scoreless first quarter, the rain began falling heavily,
and that's when the Gators swamped the Vols. In a sequence that saw
Tennessee fumble the ball on four consecutive plays, the Gators ran
to a 24-0 halftime lead.

They didn't lose all those fumbles, but they happened.  Here's what happened:
Fumbled snap (in the rain), turnover.
Florida scores.
Fumbled kickoff return, turnover.
Florida immediately throws an INT at the 1 yd line.
Fumbled snap, recovered.
Fumbled snap, recovered.

So on Tennessee's end, that's 4 straight fumbles.

Nebraska's going to have a Turnover Hard Hat?

Just back from the pool, it's still low 90°s here of course, not bad humidity.  Somebody cleaned the deck, which is nice, but they flushed everything into the pool, which isn't.

I wouldn't clean the deck at this time of year anyway.