Scoring defense...what I have been saying

1

1gtfan

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all along...Until we get this fixed, we will not be a serious MNC contender...

There is a great thread on the hive as to a Rivals article sizing up the MNC contenders for next year, it says that GT misses the mark ONLY because of our scoring defense. We give up too many points. great things are expected from us on offense (of course that is a no brainer) but, until we clamp down on defense we will not be serious contenders. Sounds right.

I, like most am real excited about our potential on offense but, feel, the storyline the next year or two here at Gt, will be our defense. This is it in a nutshell. IF, P.J. can bring us up to a top 15 scoring defense, we will be a serious MNC contender..
 
wow 1gtfan

No one had any idea at all on this board that you were concerned about defense.

thanks for sharing.
 
hiveredtech said:
wow 1gtfan

No one had any idea at all on this board that you were concerned about defense.

thanks for sharing.
Click to expand...

:laugher:

That goes with the territory I guess, being passionate about GT football and wanting to win..
 
Scoring defense is such a meaningless stat. If our offense controls the ball and the defense only has 7 possessions in one game and gives up 14 points, is that really better than when the defense has to defend 11 possessions and gives up 17 points?

Obviously you want to let in the lowest amount of points possible, but you have to understand that the offense's performance is just as much a part of that as the defense's. And that doesn't just mean if they play bad...if they score quickly and often, they'll give the ball back quickly and often, which means that the other team's offense is going to score more often. That's not a function of how our defense is playing.

It would be much more realistic to look at points given up per possession, and account somehow for turnovers by the offense inside our own 20 or something. I'm sure there are statistical models out there to do this sort of thing much better than I could come up with.
 
gth816f said:
Scoring defense is such a meaningless stat. If our offense controls the ball and the defense only has 7 possessions in one game and gives up 14 points, is that really better than when the defense has to defend 11 possessions and gives up 17 points?

Obviously you want to let in the lowest amount of points possible, but you have to understand that the offense's performance is just as much a part of that as the defense's. And that doesn't just mean if they play bad...if they score quickly and often, they'll give the ball back quickly and often, which means that the other team's offense is going to score more often. That's not a function of how our defense is playing.

you give me a top 15 scoring defense withy the offense P.J. is putting together and Gt will not be beat....

It would be much more realistic to look at points given up per possession, and account somehow for turnovers by the offense inside our own 20 or something. I'm sure there are statistical models out there to do this sort of thing much better than I could come up with.
Click to expand...

I disagree TOTALLY on scoring defense doesnt matter...
ANY coach worth his salt will tell you all the other stuff (this statistic that statistic this excuse that excuse)doesnt matter, the only real stat is how many points you gave up. granted time of possesion helps a lot but, what is the end result ? How many points did you give up ?

Back in January, after all the bowls on College football live, they had several coaches on there, Holtz, Bowden exct. and in the discussion on defense, they said that scoring defense was the most underated "Quote" statistic in all of football...If the other team doesn't score they can't win....

You give me a top 15 scoring defense with the potent offense P.J. is putting together and we will be tough for anyone to beat...I remember fondly the Don Lindsey Blackwatch defenses and how we held all opponents down and we were in every game...Give me that defense with our offense now...we are MNC contenders every year..
 
I agree with 1gtfan at least to a certain extent. I'm more concerned about our defense than our offense. To win consistently, you've got to play well on both sides of the ball.

We'll learn a lot about our DC this year and next. Hopefully, it'll be good. :fingersx:
 
The current trend of one side of the ball being considerably stronger than the other goes way back at GT and is no coincidence. With GOL, Fridge cherrypicked the recruits he wanted for his offense. With Chan, Tenuta got all the stud two-way athletes. Now with PJ, the O is getting "preferential treatment" with respect to the top athletes that sign on the dotted line for GT.

The question should be "Are we finally getting the numbers of high quality athletes for all 3 phases of the game?"

When the answer to that question is "yes," we'll be perenial contenders for championships.
 
dressedcheeseside said:
The current trend of one side of the ball being considerably stronger than the other goes way back at GT and is no coincidence. With GOL, Fridge cherrypicked the recruits he wanted for his offense. With Chan, Tenuta got all the stud two-way athletes. Now with PJ, the O is getting "preferential treatment" with respect to the top athletes that sign on the dotted line for GT.

The question should be "Are we finally getting the numbers of high quality athletes for all 3 phases of the game?"

When the answer to that question is "yes," we'll be perenial contenders for championships.
Click to expand...

That's right on the mark, but I do think PJ has the winning mentality to bring it on both sides of the ball.
 
1gtfan said:
I disagree TOTALLY on scoring defense doesnt matter...
ANY coach worth his salt will tell you all the other stuff (this statistic that statistic this excuse that excuse)doesnt matter, the only real stat is how many points you gave up. granted time of possesion helps a lot but, what is the end result ? How many points did you give up ?

Back in January, after all the bowls on College football live, they had several coaches on there, Holtz, Bowden exct. and in the discussion on defense, they said that scoring defense was the most underated "Quote" statistic in all of football...If the other team doesn't score they can't win....

You give me a top 15 scoring defense with the potent offense P.J. is putting together and we will be tough for anyone to beat...I remember fondly the Don Lindsey Blackwatch defenses and how we held all opponents down and we were in every game...Give me that defense with our offense now...we are MNC contenders every year..
Click to expand...

Well of course the bottom line is the score is all that matters. But when you try to get into the REASON a team is unsuccessful, then everything changes. If you just look at a defense's PPG let in, see that it's higher than other teams', and say that consequently the defense is doing a poor job, you could be completely off.

We could decrease our scoring defense by a ton if we didn't go for big plays on offense...it probably wouldn't be too hard to get into the top 15. In that case, is the bottom line how many points you gave up? Of course not. Just because you changed your offensive game to improve your scoring defense doesn't mean you actually improved your defense. That's called treating the symptom(the total amount of points let in) rather than the disease(poor defensive play.)

But it's a fact of life that if our offense is putting up 30+ ppg with a couple of one play/two play touchdown drives per game, our defense is NOT going to be top 15 purely on points let in per game. To say the only stat that matters is how many points you let in is wrong...the only stat that REALLY matters is if you scored more points than the other team. Football's a team sport, even though the defense and offense aren't on the field together.

I'm confident(and maybe tonight when I have time I will do this) that if you charted offensive PPG scored vs. defensive PPG allowed for D1 bowl teams, you would see a direct relationship between the two. Now, the relationship would be less pronounced for teams with a better defense(the ultimate goal), but it would still be there.
 
I do agree that our 1-2 play drives will hurt our defense, mostly because they are human. The 2nd most important thing that goes on while your offense is on the field is that your defense is off the field, resting up to go back on. When the offense is only out there for 29 seconds of play clock or something, the defense is going to get tired out (though the same problem can be caused by 3 and outs). A tired defense could be get 21 hanged on em by a team like Duke or worse.
 
1gtfan said:
I disagree TOTALLY on scoring defense doesnt matter...
ANY coach worth his salt will tell you all the other stuff (this statistic that statistic this excuse that excuse)doesnt matter, the only real stat is how many points you gave up. granted time of possesion helps a lot but, what is the end result ? How many points did you give up ?
Click to expand...
He's just saying scoring defense isn't the greatest tool for showing how good a defense really is.
 
To be the devils advocate...

For 2008 a scoring defense in the 30s was a much bigger accomplishment in the Big 12 than the ACC. 28th put us sixth in the ACC. Only Texas beats that out of the Big 12.

Oklahoma was 58th. If you think there are 57 better defenses I beg to differ... (Duke was 50th and Navy was 40th for instance)

I believe we agree that it is a great indicator but it ain't perfect.
 
1gtfan said:
all along...Until we get this fixed, we will not be a serious MNC contender...

There is a great thread on the hive as to a Rivals article sizing up the MNC contenders for next year, it says that GT misses the mark ONLY because of our scoring defense. We give up too many points. great things are expected from us on offense (of course that is a no brainer) but, until we clamp down on defense we will not be serious contenders. Sounds right.

I, like most am real excited about our potential on offense but, feel, the storyline the next year or two here at Gt, will be our defense. This is it in a nutshell. IF, P.J. can bring us up to a top 15 scoring defense, we will be a serious MNC contender..
Click to expand...
Not going to get into this with you again, but did you miss the point that if we had given up 3 fewer points we would have been one of the few teams to make all 5 gates in their methodology? If you're going to base your criticism of the defense on that article, at least understand how close we were to their threshold....3 points from top 20. It's not like we sucked.
 
ncjacket said:
Not going to get into this with you again, but did you miss the point that if we had given up 3 fewer points we would have been one of the few teams to make all 5 gates in their methodology? If you're going to base your criticism of the defense on that article, at least understand how close we were to their threshold....3 points from top 20. It's not like we sucked.
Click to expand...

Oh gosh, here you go again...OK we are good on defense...I know you are the monitor of monitors on the 2 boards..So OK We are good on defense....We will now be that MNC contender we all want us to be....

Let me get over to rivals, call 680 the fan and anyone else (That will be a long list of people that think we aren't or not even close) and tell them all..The resident know it all...thinks we are good on defense and can contend for championships just the way we are....Speaking of points, what is your point? We are good on defense? We are just fine the way we are ? We don't need to get any better? Don't give me statistics, that's for losers. are we or are are we not, good enough on defense to win championships? Anywhere close to being good enough on defense?
 
We all know that beating uga is the main thing.

I think if we look back at our games with them, we are more likely to win when we are clicking on offense than when we have a truly stout defense. Post Dodd, I would count 69, 85, and 98 as defensive wins. I would count 74, 77, 84, 89, 90, 99, 00, and 08 as offensive wins. 1990 could probably go in both columns. I think that their depth eventually wears out our defense no matter how good, and has allowed them to steal at least a dozen games in the last few minutes post Dodd (73, 76, 78, 83, 86, 93, 95, 97, 01, 05, 06). When our offense can keep on putting up points, we have a better chance.
 
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