Totally disagree. The def has not been without issues.
It wasnt the defense that gave up a pick 8 or any of the myriad of fumbles giving the other team a short field. It wasnt the def that gave up punt return touchdowns. It wasnt the def that failed to kick the ball into the endzone.
The defense isnt without their issues. Blaming the seasons losses on them while not holding the offense accountable for the enormous amount of turnovers isnt fair.
It has been the defense that rolls over on 3rd and long. It has been the defense that gives up explosive plays all season.
I don't think there's a lot of room to defend this defense. They've been awful all season. The indications were even there during the non-conference, when they gave up 200 yards rushing to Northern Colorado.
We're 99th in the nation on 3rd down defense - and that reflects improvement over the last 2 weeks.
We're 121st against the pass. Opponents complete 63.5% of their passes on the season, for 13.84 yards per completion (5th worst in the nation).
We're 83rd against the run, giving up 4.98 yards per carry.
Scoring defense, we're 95th in the country at 31.5 ppg.
Red zone defense, we're actually in the top half at #49, we only give up red zone scores 81.6% of the time. But, 25 out of 31 of those red zone scores have been TDs. And, we actually have a fairly low number of red zone attempts because we've given up 20 TDs of over 20 yards.
Even without the stats, it's pretty clear on observation that our D is bad. How many dozens of times this season have we seen a 15+ yard reception completed without a defender in the area? How many times have we seen an RB get 5 yards downfield before he's touched? Or, how many times has that RB been hit in the backfield but still gained 7 yards? We're bad, there's no way around it.
In spite of that, Biggs is also right. The offense has made things
really hard on the defense multiple times this season. Utah, Cal, UCLA all go down as offensive failures in one way or another...although UCLA is the only one that I think is fair to give more than half the blame to the offense. If they don't put it on the ground 5 times, we win. Utah and Cal, the offense certainly could (should?) have done more, but the D made both opposing QBs look pretty good.
Oregon, the D fell apart on the final drive and couldn't even force a 3rd down much less a stop - giving up 53 yards in 52 seconds. It was compounded by bad kick coverage and Gordon's pick-8, but the game was in the D's hands and they folded. ASU was similar, with fewer excuses.