It’s been awesome to see the offense lighting it up the past few weeks, and great to see us actually leading or the near the top of some offensive categories in the conference, but I can’t help but acknowledge we have played some pretty terrible defenses. Our opponents’ SP+/Defensive Efficiency rankings are as follows:
BYU: 64/52
Northern Illinois: 111/82
Idaho State: N/A
USC: 56/44
Washington St.: 90/112
Oregon St.: 110/122
The good news is that against the best defense we have played all year (USC), despite the penalties and red zone issues, we still moved the ball pretty effectively. The bad news is that at best they are a top 50 defense. It’s been nice to put up some points and gain some confidence the last couple weeks, but if we’re being objective we have to take into account that we were playing two of the worst defenses in the country.
Here are the passing stats and total team yards for the last two teams to play Washington State and Oregon State:
Washington State:
Jayden Daniels: 26/36, 363 yds, 3 td, 0 int, Total team yards: 532
DTR: 25/38, 507 yds, 5 td, 1 int, Total team yards: 657
Oregon State:
Davis Mills: 28/35, 245, 3 TD, 0 int, Total team yards: 353
UCLA Backup: 27/41, 236, 1 TD, 0 int, Total team yards: 492
Utah:
vs. Wazzu: 21/30, 334 yds, 2 TD, 0 int, 526
vs. Oregon State: 14/17, 247 yds, 2 TD, 0 int, 503
So we basically had similarly impressive offensive performances as UCLA and ASU against Wazzu, and slightly outperformed the offensive outputs of Stanford and UCLA vs. Oregon State.
Our defense has been legit. We’ve played some solid offenses in USC, Oregon State, and Washington State and still remain near the top of many defensive rankings; however, I am not willing to draw any conclusions about the offense until we face some tougher defenses. Given our offense was only ok against the only two defenses ranked inside the top 90 that we’ve faced this year, I am still in wait and see mode.
The defensive competition goes way up this week over anything we’ve faced. I expect the defense to continue its stellar play, and very curious to see if any of the offensive improvements we’ve seen the past few weeks are real, or just a product of playing some terrible defenses. I’m predicting a win, but I’m thinking it’s going to be something like 24-14, and we get to see a little more of Ben Lennon than we have over the past month.
Maybe I should clarify by what I mean by “over confident.” Our offense is currently ranked as the 13th most efficient offense in college football. My sense from twitter, media, etc. is that a lot of people are buying into this being a top 15/20 offense in the nation. Have we really improved that much? Or are we more like a top 40/50 offense that has just played extremely soft defenses?
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