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Cotton Bowl Stats Breakdown: The top two defenses in the nation take the field on Friday night

Joe Cookby:Joe Cook•01/06/25•

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Anthony Hill
Anthony Hill (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

According to ESPN’s SP+, the top two defenses in the country will be in Arlington, Texas on Friday night.

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The No. 8 Ohio State Buckeyes possess the No. 1 defense according to Bill Connelly’s ESPN-hosted advanced analytical measure, while the No. 5 Texas Longhorns are the metric’s No. 2 defense.

Those advanced measures are backed up by a number of No. 1 or No. 2 postings by both teams in counting stats. The two teams are both in the top five in several categories including total defense, passing yards allowed, passing efficiency defense, scoring defense, and red zone defense.

Here’s a look at more stats, both regular and advanced, ahead of Friday’s game.

Standard Stats

via the UT game notes

College Football Insiders

Weekly reminder: The Longhorns and the Buckeyes are among the nation’s best in almost every advanced statistical category save for defensive rush rate over expected.

What does that measure? According to CFB-Stats’ Parker Fleming, it looks at given down, distance, yard line, and game state, how often do you call designed runs relative to an average team?

Fleming has reiterated that RROE is not a measure of quality. It’s a measure of what opponents are doing against a defense.

For most of these pictures, Red = Bad and Blue = Good. That doesn’t apply for this particular stat, it just illustrates how often a team is calling a designed run relative to an average team.

SP+

Texas is currently the No. 4 overall team in SP+, a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency maintained Connelly.

The Longhorns boast a SP+ rating of 26.1, 0.7 behind No. 3 Alabama and 3.7 behind No. 2 Ole Miss.

Texas is No. 9 in offensive SP+, No. 2 in defensive SP+, and No. 120 in special teams SP+.

Ohio State is the top team in SP+ with a rating of 30.9. The Buckeye offense is No. 3 in offensive SP+, No. 1 in defensive SP+, and No. 64 in special teams SP+.

ESPN FPI

For whatever it’s worth at this juncture, the Ohio State Buckeyes supplanted the Texas Longhorns as the top team in ESPN’s FPI and moved the Horns down to the No. 2 spot.

However, Texas somehow has a higher win-out percentage of 50.3 compared to Ohio State’s 49.7 despite trailing them in the rankings.

Texas also has a 50.1 percent chance of winning on Friday, according to FPI.

Of the four teams left, here are FPI’s percentage chances for each team to win the national championship.

  • Notre Dame – 29.1
  • Ohio State – 28.4
  • Texas – 26.9
  • Penn State – 15.6

FEI

Ohio State is the No. 1 overall team in FEI. The Buckeyes also have the No. 2 offense, the No. 2 defense, and the No. 16 special teams unit according to the opponent-adjusted possession efficiency data representing the scoring advantage per non-garbage possession a team or unit would expect to have on a neutral field against an average opponent. 

Texas is No. 5 in FEI. The Longhorn offense is No. 13, the defense is No. 3, and the special teams unit is No. 48.

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