Hoppy said

I don't think it is misleading. Inflated may be a good word for it. We also played Auburn, East Carolina, Marshall, and MTSU who all had pretty good offenses. We held Marshall in check for 3/4 of that game too. We also have 4 guys on NFL rosters from that defense (Reaser - SF, Glanton - CAR, Johnson - BUF, and Smith - Indy). That was a good defensive unit that should be given credit, even if people don't believe the 11th ranking is completely worthy.

Posted On: Sep 9th 2015, 10:33 AM #348243

One of the best defenses we've had, but still, if we had played stronger schedule, we would have been atrocious. And we still gave up big yards to other conference opponents, like MTSU…

I don't know if I would call it atrocious. I think we'd still be around the top 50 which is pretty decent for a program of our size. As OC40 stated earlier, we were not giving up numbers to conference opponents week in and week out that year like we were in 2014. The defense definitely improved as 2013 went on (minus the Auburn game, we were completely outmatched). Hopefully they improve this year as well. The one thing I will say is that yards never beat you, making those yards into points does. When you give up lots of yards on big plays, that's where it's hard to win football games. We need the old "bend but don't break" to become a reality soon or we will be in for a very long season.