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Texas football defensive improvement by the numbers

Eric Nahlinby:Eric Nahlin•12/02/22
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Pete Kwiatkowski (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

A noticeable theme early in the season was the improvement of the defense. Maybe the defense wasn’t as good, or as consistent, as the Alabama game led many to believe it would be, but that game was useful data on what the defense could become with continued improvement. After a bump or two along the way, the defense did improve throughout the season and lived up to the promise it showed on that sweltering September day.

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In fact, it it wasn’t for some situational struggles — namely on money downs — the defense would have been downright excellent from start to finish.

I had planned on aggregating the year over year numbers but was beaten to the punch by valuable Inside Texas subscriber @biodogtexas. Let’s go over those numbers to truly crystallize the improvement Pete Kwiatkowski’s unit made in Year 2.

Scoring and total offensive stats got drastically better

  • Points allowed per game went from #99 at 31.1 ppg to #29 at 21.2 ppg
  • TeamRankings has an “only defensive points allowed” (instead of total team points allowed) that has Texas at #14 with only 19.3 ppg from the defense
  • Yards per game went from #100 at 425.6 to #51 at 362 (not the most useful statistic)
  • Yards per play went from #102 at 6.03 to #19 at 4.9 (much more useful)
  • Points per play went from #93 at 0.43 to #11 at 0.28 (astonishing improvement)
  • The ratio of punts forced to scores allowed increased massively from #101 at 0.7 up to #20 at 1.5

Money downs didn’t show great improvement, but red zone defense was much better

  • 3rd Down percentage allowed went from #102 at 42.35% down to #79 at 39.9%
  • 4th Down percentage allowed was #84 in 2021 and remained #84 in 2022 at ~57%
  • Red Zone scoring percentage went down from #90 at 86% to #16 at 76%
  • Red Zone TD percentage went down from #52 at 57% to #20 at 50%

Rush defense got almost unimaginably better

  • Yards per rush went from #114 at 5.15 all the way down to #17 at 3.35 per rush
  • Rushing yards per game improved from #114 at 201.6 all the way down to #28 at 123.0 per game

Passing defense saw solid improvements

  • Opponent completion percentage dropped from #125 at 67.6% to #103 at 62.7%
  • Opponent passer rating dropped from #80 at 137.83 down to #43 at 125.26
  • Yards per attempt went from #47 at 7.1 down to #22 at 6.4
  • Passing yardage per game increased slightly from 224 to 239 but that is due to passing attempts increasing from 31 to 37
  • Sacks went from #98 at 1.67 per game up to #53 at 2.25 per game
  • Passes defended per game went up from #110 at 3.17 to #44 at 4.5

As a cohesive unit, here’s how the numbers look

ESPN’s FPI Defensive Efficiency shows Texas’ defensive ranking dropping from #59 down to #23 in the country. FootballOutsider’s Defensive FEI has Texas improving from #52 all the way up to #9 in the country. F+ (a combination of FEI and SP+) has Texas moving from #67 up to the #12 defense in the country. Sports-reference has a Simple Rating System (essentially only looks at how you held your opponent in relation to their season averages) that has Texas moving from #96 all the way up to the #7 defense in the country.

It was fun to see it on the field, but sometimes we can allow the most memorable aspects of defense — an unfortunate drive sustained by 4th down conversions as an example — cloud the much bigger picture. The big picture is crystal clear: the defense made tremendous strides this season and with another year of development and some key additions, it will be poised to make another noticeable jump.

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