ESPN made a list of the top 50 defenses in college football history. They had the 94 Cougs ranked 37th.
Palouse Posse
- Thread starter Coug-Vandal
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I haven’t looked at the list but would love to see comps next to offensive productivity/efficiency for each team. That defense got zero help from their offense.
I’m a Denver Broncos fan. 2015 D is rightfully mentioned up there with the 85 bears, and (13?) Hawks. What made that defense truly incredible was how horrific their offense was. The Bears had Payton. The Hawks had Russell and Lynch. As a defense when you continue to take the field and dominate after your offense implodes + score the points that your offense is incapable of, it’s next level.
My guess would be if you factor that in the Posse would rank way higher on that list.
Where’s this list, and how did they figure there are 36 defenses better than that unit? Since it’s ESPN, I assume they had to be from the SEC to make the top 10.
Ranking the 50 best defenses in college football history
Defense was a key to Georgia's 2021 national championship, but where does the Dawgs' D rank in college football history?
No '91 UW (or other UW) anywhere to be found, so I'm OK with it.
Ha! Ouch. I hate UW as much as the next Coug but that D was pretty stout.Ranking the 50 best defenses in college football history
Defense was a key to Georgia's 2021 national championship, but where does the Dawgs' D rank in college football history?www.espn.com
No '91 UW (or other UW) anywhere to be found, so I'm OK with it.
That defense was the best I've seen. I know the U had some ridiculous teams in the day, but those huskies make my #1 is all I have to say about that.Ranking the 50 best defenses in college football history
Defense was a key to Georgia's 2021 national championship, but where does the Dawgs' D rank in college football history?
No '91 UW (or other UW) anywhere to be found, so I'm OK with it.
This isn't a legitimate ranking without that '91 UW defense on it. It was as disruptive as the Posse, the Desert Swarm and anything USC has ever rolled out.
Some prospective -- the 1991 Husky defense game up 237 yards per game, but didn't have our "3 and out" offense. The Posse gave up only 221 yards per game, carrying an offense that generated 280 yards per game and scored only 20 TDs in 12 games, and most of those were short field TDs set up by the Posse. Now imagine the Posse with an offense like the 1991 Huskies, 472 yards per game and 58 TDs. You are probably looking at a defense that gave up less than 150 yards per game.
The 1991 Huskies were 2nd in the nation in scoring, the 1994 Cougs were 95th.
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Yeah, but its the old chicken and egg.
"they only allowed so few yardage because the offense possessed the ball so much."
There's probably a much better metric than yards allowed per game that weights all the stats into one number.
The just tells me there were a ton of blowouts where the backups were playing so the defensive stats are going to be skewed. In this day and age of data analytics, it would be interesting to see the yards allowed per play when their starters were on the field.
The beatdown they put on Bledsoe in the year prior 90 Apple Cup was the only time I've ever walked out of a Coug game.
I know as Cougs we're supposed to vehemently argue against everything UW - but that 91 defense was every bit as good as the Posse or the Swarm.
Don't conflate football practices in the social media/internet age with football of 25-30 years ago and Don James. When exactly were Hobart et al pulled in the 1991 Apple Cup exactly? When did Price pull Leaf et al against Louisiana in our 77-7 win? Much much tighter benches and far fewer subs back then, even very late. Deep benchers never played, like they do now.
Yeah that’s the flip side of this. Garbage time yards/points are also part of the stats and that UW team stomped quite a few teams. If I remember right, the RB actually should have been worse too, and they only gave up 14 in that game I think?
There’s no perfect formula, but that’s what makes these debates fun.
Two of the best defenses from my days as a kid watching nfl games were the 1991 Eagles (the year Cunningham was lost for the year in the first game, before Jerome Brown's car accident) and the 1987 Giants (peak of the Parcells era, Pepper Johnson worked his way into the starting lineup on Harry Carson's last year, LT and Banks were both dominant). Both teams were terrible offensively, and the Giants lost all their replacement player games and missed the playoffs
Would have loved to see the 91 UW team go against the Miami squad they shared the title with. Both teams better on defense than offense, would've been a real battle
I used to have some good arguments over on muttman.com about the Palouse Posse being at least equal to, if not better than their Lilac Rain. Desert Swarm worked its way into the discussion from time to time, and IIRC, Cal had a similar defense for a couple years back then.
PAC hasn't seen their (all four defenses) equal for a while, as far as I am concerned.
The only defenses in remotely the same orbit that I can recall were probably Carroll's 02-03 teams and our 03 team, but I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple
There is absolutely no way I would EVER pass up on our 94' defense. Not even close.
Besides the fact that our offense was actually hurting our defense, we were so loaded in all defensive positions that we could've played in any formation.
Chad Eaton
DeWayne Patterson
Dwayne Sanders
Don Sasa
Leon Bender
Robert Booth
Ron Childs
Mark Fields
Chris Hayes
James Darling
Torey Hunter
Singor Mobley
John Rushing
Brian Walker
Derek Henderson
Ray Jackson
Seriously... we even had Greg Burns out with an injury.
Pretty scary group. I believe like 12 Huskies eventually got drafted from that ‘91 defense. Both those defenses would be tough to beat. Difference was UW could move the ball, where Coug D didn’t get much rest.
I'd say the real difference were the "supplements" distributed as part of their training table.
That and fruit baskets flowing at undisclosed locations in Montlake
Those ‘02-03 teams were a step down from the early 90s units. They were more “bend, don’t break.” The 90s units were more “I will break you.”
I had a friend on the team in 1989 and 1990. They always knew in advance when testing was going to be done.
