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For the brave-hearted, defense for 2018, 2019

dgibbons

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For 2018, 23.3 opponents' points per game, 358.4 yards per game, 216.9 passing yards per game, 141.5 rushing yards per game, 64.5 plays per game, 27:46 TOP per game. Third down conversions 36%.

For 2019, 29.8 opponents' points per game, 450.2 yards per game, 256.9 passing yards per game, 193.4 rushing yards per game, 70.1 plays per game, 30:57 TOP per game. Third down conversions: 44%.

I will add third down conversions to the offensive stats below.
 
For 2018, 23.3 opponents' points per game, 358.4 yards per game, 216.9 passing yards per game, 141.5 rushing yards per game, 64.5 plays per game, 27:46 TOP per game. Third down conversions 36%.

For 2019, 29.8 opponents' points per game, 450.2 yards per game, 256.9 passing yards per game, 193.4 rushing yards per game, 70.1 plays per game, 30:57 TOP per game. Third down conversions: 44%.

I will add third down conversions to the offensive stats below.

Again misleading. Show Pac 12 stats.
 
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23 points and 140 yards rushing in 2018, not bad -thats DOable for the offense to overcome.

Part of the "physics" of football imo, is you are never going to have a shutdown defense when you throw the ball 40-50 times a game, but that's not what we need, we just need a slow-them-down-defense.

TOP, ball control, bill parcells defense goes with a running game. That's not us and never will be.
 
If you think it's misleading, do your own work. And learn to post a reply.
When you hit reply it should be in the proper format. I am not doing anything but hitting the reply button to a post. Sounds like the issue is with rivals .
 
When you hit reply it should be in the proper format. I am not doing anything but hitting the reply button to a post. Sounds like the issue is with rivals .

Right. Couldn't be your fault.
 
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23 points and 140 yards rushing in 2018, not bad -thats DOable for the offense to overcome.

Part of the "physics" of football imo, is you are never going to have a shutdown defense when you throw the ball 40-50 times a game, but that's not what we need, we just need a slow-them-down-defense.

TOP, ball control, bill parcells defense goes with a running game. That's not us and never will be.

The number of plays and TOP are meaningful here because the defense is having a hard time getting off the field. Scoring more points and gaining more yards with fewer plays and less time shows the offense is compensating for a poor defense.
 
If you think it's misleading, do your own work. And learn to post a reply.

In the Pac 12, he is hitting 65% of his passes. In 4 of the 5 league games he has thrown at least a pick, and in three of them he has thrown 2. Against Oregon one of his picks were a pick 6.

In the Pac 12 he throws 4 TD's a game. But that is skewed because of 9 TD's.

Until the Oregon game he had not taken the team down for a late drive either in teh first half or the end of the game and scored a TD.I am hoping he can build on the Oregon experience.
 
In the Pac 12, he is hitting 65% of his passes. In 4 of the 5 league games he has thrown at least a pick, and in three of them he has thrown 2. Against Oregon one of his picks were a pick 6.

In the Pac 12 he throws 4 TD's a game. But that is skewed because of 9 TD's.

Until the Oregon game he had not taken the team down for a late drive either in teh first half or the end of the game and scored a TD.I am hoping he can build on the Oregon experience.

Why are you making the defensive thread about Gordon? And how many times has Gordon actually had an opportunity for the TD scoring game winning drive? Why is be being criticized for that? For comparison's sake, how many times did Minshew do that? And how many things have to be excluded for you to consider numbers not "misleading"? UCLA game doesn't count despite setting school records?
 
In the Pac 12, he is hitting 65% of his passes. In 4 of the 5 league games he has thrown at least a pick, and in three of them he has thrown 2. Against Oregon one of his picks were a pick 6.

In the Pac 12 he throws 4 TD's a game. But that is skewed because of 9 TD's.

Until the Oregon game he had not taken the team down for a late drive either in teh first half or the end of the game and scored a TD.I am hoping he can build on the Oregon experience.
Not exactly true. Gordon threw a TD pass to Tay Martin with just 27 seconds left in the first half vs. UCLA capping a 90 yard drive in the last couple of minutes of the half.

Glad Cougar
 
Not exactly true. Gordon threw a TD pass to Tay Martin with just 27 seconds left in the first half vs. UCLA capping a 90 yard drive in the last couple of minutes of the half.

Glad Cougar

And FG scoring drives at the end of the game must be excluded too, in order to not be misleading. Or something like that.
 
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The number of plays and TOP are meaningful here because the defense is having a hard time getting off the field. Scoring more points and gaining more yards with fewer plays and less time shows the offense is compensating for a poor defense.


First off, thanks for starting these two treads. They actually give us something substantive and fact based to talk about.
I would be very interested in seeing points allowed per possession by year since Leach started at WSU.
 
And FG scoring drives at the end of the game must be excluded too, in order to not be misleading. Or something like that.
Nah not trying to be misleading. He plays the most high profile position and he plays for a team in part because of recruiting deficiencies on the defensive side of the ball his play is a hyper focus. Yeah throw around stats, but ignore the some of the important ones like throwing picks and include three cupcake games like they are reflective of what is going on.
 
Not exactly true. Gordon threw a TD pass to Tay Martin with just 27 seconds left in the first half vs. UCLA capping a 90 yard drive in the last couple of minutes of the half.

Glad Cougar

Sorry missed that. Prior to Oregon did he engineer a game winning drive?
 
Nah not trying to be misleading. He plays the most high profile position and he plays for a team in part because of recruiting deficiencies on the defensive side of the ball his play is a hyper focus. Yeah throw around stats, but ignore the some of the important ones like throwing picks and include three cupcake games like they are reflective of what is going on.

There were three cupcake games in 2018 too. I'm not ignoring any stats. As previously stated, go ahead and post something.
 
There were three cupcake games in 2018 too. I'm not ignoring any stats. As previously stated, go ahead and post something.

Yes, and the three cupcake games in either year does not give a read on the Pac 12 season. It is like back in the day when skip hicks busted the first play of the game for 92 yards and averaged close to 7 yards a game. The other 26 carries for 98 yards were for less than 3.8 yards a carry.

Stats can be misleading, especially when you throw three cupcakes into the mix.
 
Yes, and the three cupcake games in either year does not give a read on the Pac 12 season. It is like back in the day when skip hicks busted the first play of the game for 92 yards and averaged close to 7 yards a game. The other 26 carries for 98 yards were for less than 3.8 yards a carry.

Stats can be misleading, especially when you throw three cupcakes into the mix.

Then go ahead and post whatever stats or whatever you consider not misleading. We'll wait.

And FYI- the defense struggled at times during those cupcake games. Do we need to throw those out?
 
I don't see anything misleading, we all know 1) the season has games remaining 2) the defense this year sucks quite a bit worse than last year

the stats reflect this
 
23 points and 140 yards rushing in 2018, not bad -thats DOable for the offense to overcome.

Part of the "physics" of football imo, is you are never going to have a shutdown defense when you throw the ball 40-50 times a game, but that's not what we need, we just need a slow-them-down-defense.

TOP, ball control, bill parcells defense goes with a running game. That's not us and never will be.

Our offense has been surprisingly good at TOP/ball control. The major difference between this year's O and lasts is TOP and 3rd down conversion. If those 2 areas were closer to last year's numbers, the O may have been better at covering the D's ass in a couple of these losses, but that's a minor gripe.
 
Or three more plays on offense and we are 7-1.

My goodness. You don't get it. Let me use a school analogy to show how you are focusing on the wrong thing. I'd say, the defense overall gets a grade of D this season (although I have felt they improved the last couple games), but you obsess about the offense only performing at an A- level. You are focusing on how if they only had gotten a couple more points on some tests they would have an A. But an A- is still pretty damn good. Why are you obsessing about that instead of the D on defense. If my son gets an A- and a D in two courses, guess which class I'm going to be more concerned about impacting his semester GPA. Guess which one I'm going to say he needs to improve more?

Improving our defense to even a C level will do a lot more for us than focusing on 3 plays on offense.
 
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Sorry missed that. Prior to Oregon did he engineer a game winning drive?
I'm sure you know the answer to that. Nope, he didn't get the job done vs. UCLA with 1:07 left on the clock when Liam Ryan whiffed on a block which forced the fumble....and he didn't get the job done vs. ASU with 34 seconds left. Besides those two games, how many other opportunities did Gordon have to engineer a game winning drive?

Glad Cougar
 
My goodness. You don't get it. Let me use a school analogy to show how you are focusing on the wrong thing. I'd say, the defense overall gets a grade of D this season (although I have felt they improved the last couple games), but you obsess about the offense only performing at an A- level. You are focusing on how if they only had gotten a couple more points on some tests they would have an A. But an A- is still pretty damn good. Why are you obsessing about that instead of the D on defense. If my son gets an A- and a D in two courses, guess which class I'm going to be more concerned about impacting his semester GPA. Guess which one I'm going to say he needs to improve more?

That and an A doesn’t improve the GPA as much as getting the D up to a C+.
 
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Thanks dgibbons for these stats. There is also the good old fashioned eyeball test. I wish there were stats for being out of position, missing tackles etc. That would be telling comparing this years defense to last.
 
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23 points and 140 yards rushing in 2018, not bad -thats DOable for the offense to overcome.

Part of the "physics" of football imo, is you are never going to have a shutdown defense when you throw the ball 40-50 times a game, but that's not what we need, we just need a slow-them-down-defense.

TOP, ball control, bill parcells defense goes with a running game. That's not us and never will be.

The Leach Air Raid at WSU has ranked highly in time of possession before this year. I've posted the year-by-year ranks and WSU was consistently in the top 25 or 30 by that metric. One might think--not without reason--that a lot of this is due to almost two years of checkdowns under Falk with few explosive plays, but it was true under Halliday, too. True each year for several years now, with one outlier year (and that year, it happened to rank right by UW, which had a solid running attack at the time, in time of possession).

Honestly, rather than a virtue of some sort, I think a lot of it owes to WSU not having a lot of explosive plays during the Leach years. Most of our skill players could be chased down by opponents' secondaries (or LBs).
 
That and an A doesn’t improve the GPA as much as getting the D up to a C+.
Not to mention the pressure that the D grade puts on the offense to perform without flaw. The defense improving to a C level might even take enough pressure off of the Offense to allow them to perform even better. Imagine that!
 
For 2018, 23.3 opponents' points per game, 358.4 yards per game, 216.9 passing yards per game, 141.5 rushing yards per game, 64.5 plays per game, 27:46 TOP per game. Third down conversions 36%.

For 2019, 29.8 opponents' points per game, 450.2 yards per game, 256.9 passing yards per game, 193.4 rushing yards per game, 70.1 plays per game, 30:57 TOP per game. Third down conversions: 44%.

I will add third down conversions to the offensive stats below.
I’m actually surprised it’s not worse
 
Not to mention the pressure that the D grade puts on the offense to perform without flaw. The defense improving to a C level might even take enough pressure off of the Offense to allow them to perform even better. Imagine that!
I’m not sure about that. I would argue had ASU started out strong against us offensively, our offense wouldn’t gave gone into a slumber after being up two scores early. Likewise with Colorado when we briefly let them off the hook before shutting the door. These are 20 year olds, and this particular group seems to lack a killer instinct. This offense can do whatever it wants, but too often sits back and admires its last drive.
 
May I summarize? My own words, but I think supported by much of this thread.

The offense gets an A-, or at worst a B+. Definitely good enough to win in the PAC. We would all like a little better 3rd down conversion numbers. There is a case to be made that the more touches Borghi gets, the better we do, but it appears that those touches are close to equally effective whether run or pass. It appears that the staff is well prepared and makes good in-game decisions, though there are a few clock management related situations that I'd bet Leach would like to have back for a do over. Clock management has never been his strength.

The defense overall gets somewhere between a C- at best and a D at worst. They occasionally make a big play, but they have had a hard time following that up with enough consistency to end a drive. They play portions of games at a much better level; probably a solid B (parts of the Oregon game are an example); but they have a hard time putting together a full game. I will say that for the most part the staff is prepared. The in-game decisions on the other hand, especially at the end when they have to stop that last opposing drive have been poor. The last drive performance for UCLA, ASU and Oregon rated an F and cost us a game that we were leading at that point. When you have had success for an entire game with a particular D strategy and you chuck it all for the last drive to play a prevent D and hand the other team chunks of yardage on every play, then the staff has to recognize that they have failed the kids. Let the kids stay with what has had some success, and they will either win or lose doing what they have been doing well. Don't drop into a crappy version of a prevent and rely on the other team to make mistakes, since short of that you are giving away the game.
 
May I summarize? My own words, but I think supported by much of this thread.

The offense gets an A-, or at worst a B+. Definitely good enough to win in the PAC. We would all like a little better 3rd down conversion numbers. There is a case to be made that the more touches Borghi gets, the better we do, but it appears that those touches are close to equally effective whether run or pass. It appears that the staff is well prepared and makes good in-game decisions, though there are a few clock management related situations that I'd bet Leach would like to have back for a do over. Clock management has never been his strength.

The defense overall gets somewhere between a C- at best and a D at worst. They occasionally make a big play, but they have had a hard time following that up with enough consistency to end a drive. They play portions of games at a much better level; probably a solid B (parts of the Oregon game are an example); but they have a hard time putting together a full game. I will say that for the most part the staff is prepared. The in-game decisions on the other hand, especially at the end when they have to stop that last opposing drive have been poor. The last drive performance for UCLA, ASU and Oregon rated an F and cost us a game that we were leading at that point. When you have had success for an entire game with a particular D strategy and you chuck it all for the last drive to play a prevent D and hand the other team chunks of yardage on every play, then the staff has to recognize that they have failed the kids. Let the kids stay with what has had some success, and they will either win or lose doing what they have been doing well. Don't drop into a crappy version of a prevent and rely on the other team to make mistakes, since short of that you are giving away the game.

They ran the same defense against Oregon at the end of the first half. Only difference was Stone was in instead of Fa’aeve.
 
They ran the same defense against Oregon at the end of the first half. Only difference was Stone was in instead of Fa’aeve.

And in the second half, Oregon probably expected to see it (or something similar) and was prepared to make play calls appropriately.
 
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