Random Stats for a Thursday

I spent the past two days looking over every BYU defensive play this season.  There are some stats that I found pretty interesting, and I'll share.

Rush Defense
76.5% of all rushing plays against BYU go for 5 yards or less.  92.3% go for 10 yards or less.  25.4% go for no gain or a loss.  I have no idea how that compares nationally, but I'd have to think that's pretty good.  It makes it difficult to pound it on the ground against BYU.  If a full quarter of your rushing plays go nowhere or backwards, one penalty makes it difficult to sustain drives.

Virginia and Middle Tennessee each had only 1 rush over 10 yards.  Utah and Houston each had only 2.  Utah State had 3.  Texas had 4.  Georgia Tech managed 8, but it took 53 rushing plays (and only 1 of those rushes exceeded 20 yards).

The BYU run defense has been stout.  Again, I don't know how this looks nationally, but if fewer than 3 rushes per game go for more than 10 yards and 14 rushes per game go for no gain or losses, Bronco must be doing something right.  Only 1 out of every 70 rushing attempts goes for 20+ yards.  Every 13 rushes teams go for 10+.  BYU has done a great job keeping things in front of them in the run game for the most part.

Pass Defense
BYU's pass defense hasn't quite had the same success.  This is a pretty familiar tale for most teams these days as offenses go crazy.  BYU has done a great job in pass defense, with 45.6% of passes resulting in incompletions or interceptions.  Of the 143 completions BYU has given up, 35.7% have gone for 5 yards or less (includes 3.5% of completions resulting in loss of yardage).  69.9% of those completions have been 10 yards or less.  11.9% of completions have resulted in 20+ yards, however, with 8 passes going for over 40 yards.  Houston had 4 of those, so prior to that, BYU was giving up one 40-yard pass play every 6 quarters.

Keeping it in perspective, however, BYU hasn't played an Oregon, Baylor, or Texas Tech.  Houston is similar to those teams, but they aren't those teams.  Prior to Houston, my father told me BYU's D was rolling and would shut them down, just as they had every other game this season.  I told him this: "the best offense BYU has played this season is Utah, which is not a very good offense.  They gave up 4 big plays that game and that was the difference.  Houston should double that b/c they are twice the offense Utah was.  BYU's offense will have to score for BYU to win."  I was wrong, Houston only had 5, but they doubled up Utah in points.  I was right that BYU's offense would have to put up a lot of points to win...and they did.

Overall
Teams cannot run on BYU, so they will have to make their living passing.  That bodes well for the remainder of BYU's schedule.  Boise is the most balanced attack BYU will face, Wisconsin and Notre Dame are run-heavy, and Idaho State and Nevada should not be contests.  BYU gives up an average of 3 plays over 20 yards/game, about 0.5 rushing and 2.5 passing.  If they can hold their average against those three opponents, they should be able to secure victories in each of those games.  If they can't sustain that success, or if any team can also find success on the ground against BYU, then BYU won't win those games.