The Most Efficient Defensive Teams of the Mike Gundy Era

Yesterday we looked at the most efficient offense of the Gundy Era (RIP that 2011 offense, wipes tear). You can read more about that here. Today I want to look at the most efficient defenses. The metric here is points per drive[1. I’ll go to my grave trying to get people to care about PPD in college football and strokes gained in golf.] and since we’re talking about defense, lower is better.

Last year, Alabama allowed 1.02 points per drive. That is outrageously good. But this is also a normalization for the SEC-Big 12 debate. It’s tough to argue that OU’s defense sucks even though it gives up 25 points a game when its points per drive numbers are lower than, say, Ole Miss, LSU and Michigan State.

So let’s look at OSU which had one of its worst PPD years of the last nine years last season. Here’s the source for the data.

Again, lower is better. That 2013 defense was spectacular. The last two seasons, not so much. OSU has been worse than the NCAA average in both seasons. If OSU has a 2013-like year this year, it will win the Big 12. I would even take a 2009 or 2010 season from Glenn Spencer and Co.

“We’ve got a lot of guys that have played, so that experience is hard to coach,” said a hopeful Spencer on Monday. “So much on our side of the ball is reaction to what you’re getting and different looks; when somebody changes something up at the first of the game that you’ve never seen before. We struggled at times with that last year, and then hopefully this year with experience and guys that have played the game, they can make quicker adjustments than we had. That’s a strength, but all of that is proven, it’s not talked about. There were times today [at practice] when that wasn’t proven.”

Devante Averette said OSU is potentially deeper than it was last year which is sort of implied by Spencer.

“We are two or three deep in each position,” said Averette. “We have guys like Justin Phillips and Josh Mabin. Those guys have been around the system, and they have been thrown in different positions so they know what to do. Everyone knows every position on the field. It helps us with our confidence in our defense.”