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Is the 2019 Oklahoma State Defense *Really* as Strong as We Think?

Yes … sort of.

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Defense wins championships, and if you’re Oklahoma State, it saves your season, right? Right? The eye test says, yes this is true — and I think it probably is — but the numbers tell an intriguing story.

The numbers tell me that what has slowed down is not necessarily the rate at which opposing teams have scored but rather the pace at which Oklahoma State’s games have been played. So you can look at the 27 points OSU is allowing this year compared to 32.5 last year and holler about a much better defense, but isn’t OSU just not facing as many possessions?

Here are the pace-adjusted numbers for OSU’s defense year over year.

2018 points per drive allowed: 2.55
2019 points per drive allowed: 2.14

So they’re definitely better than last year (which was an abomination), but what about all the other years in the Gundy era? Not so much.

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That 2.14 number from BCF Toys is a good (not great) number, but it’s actually worse overall than the last two seasons of the Glenn Spencer era, which got him fired. So I guess my point here is that while it certainly feels better than those defenses did, it’s not necessarily statistically better.

A caveat: OSU has been awesome the second half of the season. On October 23, their PPD number was 2.43 (which is quite bad). A month and five games later, it’s 2.14. That means they went around or under 2.0 for the last five games, which is spectacular. Throw in the turnovers, and we start talking about the Steel Orange Curtain.

Another caveat: If you go beyond PPD and look at deeper efficiency numbers — namely S&P+ — OSU is definitely improved. Here’s a refresh on S&P+.

What is SP+? In a single sentence, it’s a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is simply a measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football. If you’re lucky or unimpressive in a win, your rating will probably fall. If you’re strong and unlucky in a loss, it will probably rise. [ESPN]

Here’s OSU’s national defensive ranking by year.

2019: 51
2018: 71
2017: 35
2016: 51
2015: 73
2014: 46
2013: 7

So S&P+ tells me that the 2014 defense was actually more efficient than the 2019 defense. Again, advanced numbers are one way — not the way — to measure a defense, but I found all of this pretty intriguing.

I don’t think anybody who has watched the games thinks OSU’s defense is anything but better, but because they’ve turned themselves into a glorified Big Ten team on the offensive side, I’m not sure that improvement is quite as pronounced as we all might like to believe. Berry Tramel’s conference-only numbers* (probably a better way to look at this, to be fair) disagree with me.

I can’t remember who said it — although I wish I could — but I think there’s a legit arc of Jim Knowles figuring out the Big 12 over the first season, applying his guys in the right places to start the second and then crushing over the second half (the flip side of that argument: OSU only played two good offensive teams in their last five games, and it gave up 3.8 PPD to one of them — OU).

There’s some good news on the offensive side, too.

After three straight years of top-seven national S&P+ offenses, OSU remains in the top 25 on that side of the ball (again, Tramel disagrees). This goes the other way, too, remember. Just because you slow it down and don’t score 50 a game doesn’t mean you’re bad on offense. You might be just as efficient even without scoring as many points (? Alabama).

OSU is 23rd in offensive S&P+ this season in Spencer Sanders’ freshman season, which is one spot better than they were in 2015 when Mason Rudolph took the reins for the first time.

*I don’t believe Berry tosses out garbage-time drives like BCF Toys does.

 

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