Sunday, November 9, 2008

It's Worse than We Thought

I swear I didn't set out this week to bash Willie, but since Richt obviously isn't going to acknowledge the problem, I'm going to drop some more number on the blogosphere. This year's defense is worse than the Kevin Ramsey Project(KRP). No, seriously. Below are the scoring defenses in SEC games + Tech since I started following UGA football as an 11 year old in '92:

Year Avg. Median
1992 14.89 11.00
1993 24.22 28.00
1994 29.22 29.00
1995 24.11 23.00
1996 26.00 24.00
1997 19.89 15.00
1998 19.67 21.00
1999 28.33 30.00
2000 21.22 21.00
2001 20.00 20.00
2002 15.60 17.00
2003 15.30 15.00
2004 16.89 17.00
2005 15.80 14.50
2006 20.00 21.00
2007 20.89 17.00
2008 28.71 38.00

As you can see, this year's D is even worse than the KRP of 1999.
How this is possible is beyond me. The median is even scarier, if that's your preferred measure of central tendency. Because this year's sample size is at least two games smaller than the other seasons, the median should come down more in line with the average as Florida's 49 points is right now a bit of an outlier. Regardless, this defense is bad. How bad you ask? As bad as Ramsey's. As bad as some of the mid-90's Goff disasters. And no question the worst of the Richt era.

For Richt to defend CWM on his job this year is delusional to the point of being scary to me. Special teams, offensive turnovers, and short fields unquestionably contribute to the scoring defense number and if Richt wants to acknowledge that as part of the issue, I have no problem with that. It most certainly is. But he can't bury his head and act like there hasn't been a huge shift in how our defense plays both in terms of production and attitude since BVG left.

On a side note, if anyone ever asks you when you think Georgia's current problems with Florida started, kindly direct them to October 31, 1992. The 1992 was Goff's best team and Spurrier's worst team, yet UF managed to win 26-24. That was their third straight in the series, but more importantly, it was the proof of what Spurrier had been preaching to his team for 3 years about having to believe they were going to beat Georgia no matter what. Zeier, Hearst, Hastings, and a defense that gave up 15 points/game (which is actually even better than it looks as they gave up 34 to UT when they fumbled like 1000 times) couldn't beat Spurrier. Up to that point in the series, it had always been UF that had its more talented teams beat because they played tight and Georgia KNEW they were going to win no matter what. That one game was HUGE for the psychology of the series and certainly caused a change in attitude both in UF's program and their fan's attitude when it came to the WLOCP.

2 comments:

  1. That is some serious statistical data. If you don't mind my asking where is this sourced from?

    Also, not to be nit-picky because I definitely appreciate the traffic direction, but I'm linked as Blogging Prideless (which was one of the many names I've donned over the months) but overall it's usually "Pantsless". The name changes are a joke...like my journalistic integrity.

    Keep up the good work Tri-Guy!

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  2. Thanks. I did a web query from the NCAA website to get the data, then go in and clean it up. That's what happens when you have an MBA and a job that your under-used at--you get bored and do statistical analysis and blog on company time!! I check your blog all the time too, keep up the hilarious bashing of Tech!!

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