Whatever Happened to Defense in the SEC? Part 3

In this third part of four we will be looking not only at SEC defenses but the SEC offenses as well. One of the questions I will hopefully answer by the end of this blog will be, "Are the SEC offenses having an effect on our perception of SEC defenses?" I am going to attack this question from a variety of angles. First we will look at some national rankings, second we will see how SEC on SEC games stack up against the yearly average, and finally how the SEC is comparing to last year.

So lets get started laying the ground-work with some national rankings. I have included the defensive rankings based on points per game, passing yards allowed per game, rushing yards allowed per game, and total defense per game. I have ranked the SEC teams by total defensive rank, but have also highlighted all the teams in the Top 50 in points allowed.

Team	Points Allowed	Rank	Passing Allowed	Rank	Rushing Allowed	Rank	Total Defense	Rank
Florida	12.2	4	152	6	65	2	217	2
Alabama	12.2	4	214	44	85.8	6	299.8	12
Arkansas	23.5	43	215	46	124.5	30	339.5	27
Miss. State	23.6	44	219.8	56	140.8	44	360.6	37
Ole Miss	25.2	55	185.6	18	175.8	81	361.4	40
South Carolina	25.8	60	237.2	72	127.8	72	365	42
LSU	24.7	52	207.5	34	159.5	65	367	44
Vanderbilt	26.5	64	221.5	59	168.5	77	390	58
Kentucky	25.6	59	195	24	196.2	98	391.2	59
Georgia	32.2	95	264.6	97	139.2	97	403.8	66
Missouri	22.4	41	293.8	113	118.6	113	412.4	76
Tennessee	28	75	240.8	78	175.7	80	416.5	79
Auburn	22	38	282	106	162.4	68	444.4	96
Texas A&M	30.8	87	262	95	214.8	109	476.8	112

As this graphic shows, there are 7 teams ranked in the Top 50 for total defense. That's half of the SEC in the Top 50. And if you look across the chart to the highlighted teams, there are 6 in the Top 50 in points allowed, with LSU and Ole Miss sitting right outside. I do find it interesting that 2 of the top 4 defenses are Florida and Alabama, no surprises, but the other two are Mississippi State and Arkansas. Apparently I should have included them in my first 2 parts when I was looking at defenses, but they don't have the records of the Big 6. The key stat to take-away from this is the SEC is allowing on average 23.9 points a game, with 6 teams (almost 7) performing better than that.

Now lets look at some national offensive rankings for the SEC. Once again, I have included the game averages for points scored, passing yards, rushing yards, and total yards. They are ranked by total yards and the Top 50 point scoring teams are highlighted.

Team	Points	Rank	Passing	Rank	Rushing	Rank	Total Offense	Rank
Texas A&M	49.2	3	365	6	221.4	21	586.4	3
Missouri	46.6	8	285	32	258.8	15	543.8	7
Georiga	39.8	23	315.2	17	214.8	27	530	11
LSU	45.5	9	291.5	27	197.3	43	488.8	23
South Carolina	31	61	261	44	215.4	26	476.4	30
Miss. State	32.4	47	256.4	49	208.2	37	464.6	35
Ole Miss	27.2	84	243.8	58	184	55	427.8	52
Auburn	28.8	69	184.4	104	242.2	18	426.6	53
Vanderbilt	33.7	43	272	39	153	77	425	55
Alabama	37	35	238.4	62	166.2	69	404.6	70
Florida	25	92	201.4	96	192	49	393.4	78
Arkansas	26	87	175.3	109	216	24	391.3	83
Kentucky	23	97	226.8	71	162.2	71	388.8	84
Tennessee	31.7	55	164.2	111	211	32	375.2	90

As you can see there are 6 teams in the Top 50 for total yards this year with Ole Miss, Auburn, and Vanderbilt sitting just outside. But in points scored we have 7 teams in the Top 50 with Tennessee almost there. The key stat once again is that the SEC is scoring 34 points a game, with 5 teams (almost 6) scoring above that.

But what do the stats mean? Not much, unless you have something to compare it to. So I went and made another chart that shows the average points scored and allowed for last year and then broke out the average points scored and allowed IN conference. I then ranked the teams by the teams that had the biggest difference between points allowed in conference compared to their season average.

	Pts Scored Ly	Pts Allowed Ly	SEC Pts Scored	SEC Pts Allowed	Diff. in Pts Scored	Diff. in Pts Allowed
Kentucky	17.9	28	11.1	36	6.8	-8
Auburn	15	28	9	34	6	-6
Vanderbilt	30	18.7	18.9	23.9	11.1	-5.2
Missouri	25.8	28	14.6	33	11.2	-5
Miss. State	29.4	23.3	25	28	4.4	-4.7
Tennessee	36	35.7	30.8	40	5.2	-4.3
Ole Miss	31.5	26	28	29.9	3.5	-3.9
South Carolina	31.5	18.2	28.6	21	2.9	-2.8
Alabama	38.7	10.6	37	13	1.7	-2.4
Arkansas	23.5	30	19.6	32	3.9	-2
LSU	29.8	17.5	22.5	18.8	7.3	-1.3
Florida	27	10.9	25.8	11.9	1.2	-1
Texas A&M	44.5	21.5	39	21	5.5	0.5
Georgia	38	20	32.9	19	5.1	1

It is immediately obvious that every team but 2 (A&M and Georgia) gave up more points in conference play on average when compared to the points allowed for the whole year last. And in addition to that ALL of the SEC teams scored less points in conference play compared to their season averages.

If you crunch some numbers the break-down comes out like this:

SEC points per game last year: 29.9

SEC points allowed per game last year: 22.6

SEC points scored in conference: 24.5

SEC points allowed in conference: 25.8

Here is proof that the SEC is a highly competitive conference top to bottom. There are no off weeks, all of these teams come packed and ready to play each other every Saturday. But the domination outside of the conference is significant as well. So even going back to last year, the defenses were struggling with the offenses within conference to an extent, but was still keeping the higher powered offenses below their standards, see Missouri and Vanderbilt.

Now if you pull out the current season's stats and rank them the same way you get this:

	Pts Scored Ly	Pts Allowed Ly	SEC Pts Scored	SEC Pts Allowed	Diff. in Pts Scored	Diff. in Pts Allowed
Miss. State	32.4	23.6	23	41.5	9.4	-17.9
Arkansas	26	23.5	21.5	37.5	4.5	-14
Texas A&M	49.2	30.8	43.5	41	5.7	-10.2
Alabama	37	12.2	37	21	0	-8.8
LSU	45.5	24.7	45	30.3	0.5	-5.6
Missouri	46.6	22.4	51	28	-4.4	-5.6
South Carolina	31	25.8	33.3	31.3	-2.3	-5.5
Ole Miss	27.2	25.2	20.3	30	6.9	-4.8
Tennessee	31.7	28	24	32.5	7.7	-4.5
Kentucky	23	25.6	17.5	29.5	5.5	-3.9
Auburn	28.8	22	25	25.7	3.8	-3.7
Vanderbilt	33.7	26.5	29.3	29.3	4.4	-2.8
Georgia	39.8	32.2	39.7	34	0.10	-1.8
Florida	25	12.2	28.3	11.3	-3.3	0.90

Last year there was a difference of 3.22 points a game from the season average to the SEC average in points allowed. This year that average has doubled to 6.3. BUT, the offenses which were scoring an average of 5.4 more points in conference last year are only scoring 2.75 more in conference this year.

Here are the rest of the break-downs:

SEC points per game this year: 34 

SEC points allowed per game this year: 23.9

SEC points scored in conference: 31.3

SEC points allowed in conference: 31.1

WOW, what a difference between average points scored based on in conference compared to that number against everyone else. Also, look at the SEC offensive point production which is up 4.1 points from last year. So I think we can definitely say that SEC offenses are performing at a higher level than they were last year; add to the fact of how competitive the SEC games are and we start to see that negative perception of the SEC defense start to take shape. The SEC D's are allowing 5.3 points more in conference play this year, but the drop off from the offenses is not as big as it was within the conference a year ago. And if you look at the SEC defenses overall compared to last year they are only allowing 1.3 points more per game, which is due to the fact that the SEC offenses have upped their production.

Sports is a game of action and re-action. And I believe that is what we are seeing here. All the defensive talent went to the SEC, and in order to win more games SEC coaches started looking for more ways to score points and some bigger offensive talent was recruited to the SEC. The quarterback play is better in the SEC than we have ever seen. With Manziel, Mettenberger, Murray, McCarron, Wallace, and Shaw to go with the devastating running backs already in the league, it was just a matter of time before we started seeing bigger production. We are also seeing more offenses "going fast" which wears a defense down and more and more restrictions are put on a defense by the rules committee almost daily. Recruiting is also a cycle, and right now there are a lot of young defenses in the league as shown in Parts 1 and 2 of this series. And I'm sure these teams have been recruiting fantastic offensive line talent to combat the ever dominant SEC defensive lines.

But even with the young defenses and higher scoring offenses I think the national ranking numbers and the points allowed against non-conference opponents proves that the defense in the SEC is still there, and maybe the question we should be asking is "What is going on with the SEC offenses this year?!?" And part of the answer to that is "Not much." This is still a pound it out league. There are 7 teams in the Top 50 in passing offense and there are 10 teams in the Top 50 for rushing offense with one more almost there. On the flip side, the SEC defenses only have 4 defenses in the Top 50 against the run, but 6 in the Top 50 against the pass. Also, last year SEC offenses threw the ball 44% of the time and ran it 56% of the time. Passing yards accounted for 58% of all offensive yardage and rushing accounted for 42%. THIS YEAR SEC offenses are only throwing the ball 42% of the time and running it 58%. Passing yards now only account for 54% of total offensive yards and rushing accounts for 46. So much for it becoming a "quarterback league." Don't let anyone fool you, the SEC is still who it used to be as far as I can tell. Run the ball, play defense.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for Part 4 of this look into the SEC defense when I open up the debate to include the rest of the country and compare the SEC D to the other conferences, so I can definitively answer the question of: "Whatever Happened to Defense in the SEC?"