BHF's comment about Ron Roberts being great at adjusting got me thinking. Because I’ve noticed we start out very slow on defense. Really it’s been that way for longer than just this year, but it seems like the worst AU defense is the “early drives” AU defense. I thought I’d play with some stats on it. Here’s what this year shows with our defensive stats. This is P5 games only – not wasting time with the cupcakes.
TLDR – defense starts out awful, adjusts and gets strong after 3 drives, then fades in 2nd half. It’s only interesting in that it’s been remarkably consistent all season. That's regardless of home or away.
TLDR – defense starts out awful, adjusts and gets strong after 3 drives, then fades in 2nd half. It’s only interesting in that it’s been remarkably consistent all season. That's regardless of home or away.
- We’ve not had a 3-and-out on a first drive all year. We’ve had only one 3-and-out on 1st or 2nd drives (an int vs. uga on their 2nd drive).
- We give up an average of 44 yards and 3.8 pts on the first drive of each game. We give up an average of 40 yards and 3 points per drive the first 2 drives of each game.
- We’ve given up points on the first drive to every team we’ve played this year, except uga.
- We’ve given up points on half of our 2nd drives to the teams we’ve played this year.
- Every first drive of the season has gone at least 6 plays (except LSU because they scored in 4 plays).
- 80% of the first half points against us happen on the first 3 drives
- We play our best defense by far in the 2nd quarter.
- After the 3rd drive, we give up less than .8 pts/drive for the rest of the half.
- The 2nd half we give up 2.8 pts/drive. The LSU game is an outlier though. Without it, we give up 2.1 pts/drive in the 2nd half. It's also fairly flat - we don't fade in the 4th; it's just a level drop in performance for the full 2nd half.
- 57% of the scoring attempts in the first half are FGs. 73% in the 2nd half are TDs. We bend-but-don't-break before the half. We just break in the 2nd half.
