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Max Olson, ESPN Staff Writer
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College football defensive stop rate after regular season
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College Football, Texas Longhorns, Indiana Hoosiers, Wisconsin Badgers, Colorado Buffaloes, Oklahoma Sooners, South Carolina Gamecocks, Oregon Ducks, Missouri Tigers, SMU Mustangs, Michigan Wolverines, Tennessee Volunteers, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Ohio State Buckeyes, Army Black Knights, Iowa State Cyclones, Ole Miss Rebels, James Madison Dukes, Alabama Crimson Tide, LSU Tigers, Georgia Bulldogs, Florida Gators, California Golden Bears, Sam Houston Bearkats, Utah Utes, Iowa Hawkeyes, Virginia Tech Hokies, UConn Huskies, Northern Illinois Huskies, Louisiana Tech Bulldogs, Penn State Nittany Lions, Duke Blue Devils, Nebraska Cornhuskers, Western Kentucky Hilltoppers, Navy Midshipmen, Clemson Tigers, Miami (OH) RedHawks, Houston Cougars, Tulane Green Wave, Kansas State Wildcats, Florida International Panthers, Minnesota Golden Gophers, Northwestern Wildcats, Ohio Bobcats, Rice Owls, San José State Spartans, BYU Cougars, Auburn Tigers, Old Dominion Monarchs, Kentucky Wildcats, Toledo Rockets, Liberty Flames, Texas State Bobcats, Boise State Broncos, Colorado State Rams, Kent State Golden Flashes, Mississippi State Bulldogs, Ball State Cardinals, Purdue Boilermakers, Massachusetts Minutemen, New Mexico Lobos, Southern Miss Golden Eagles, App State Mountaineers, Utah State Aggies, Stanford Cardinal, Oregon State Beavers, Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders, North Texas Mean Green, UAB Blazers, Troy Trojans, Florida Atlantic Owls, New Mexico State Aggies, Central Michigan Chippewas, Charlotte 49ers, Nevada Wolf Pack, Wake Forest Demon Deacons, UCLA Bruins, Florida State Seminoles, Western Michigan Broncos, Georgia State Panthers, Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, Arkansas State Red Wolves, Oklahoma State Cowboys, Tulsa Golden Hurricane, Arizona Wildcats, Akron Zips, NC State Wolfpack, Hawai'i Rainbow Warriors, Washington State Cougars, Texas Tech Red Raiders, UCF Knights, West Virginia Mountaineers, Wyoming Cowboys, Virginia Cavaliers, Kansas Jayhawks, TCU Horned Frogs, San Diego State Aztecs, Syracuse Orange, UL Monroe Warhawks, Maryland Terrapins, Cincinnati Bearcats, Michigan State Spartans, Temple Owls, Boston College Eagles, Illinois Fighting Illini, Air Force Falcons, Kennesaw State Owls, Georgia Southern Eagles, Buffalo Bulls, Vanderbilt Commodores, Baylor Bears, North Carolina Tar Heels, UTEP Miners, Eastern Michigan Eagles, Jacksonville State Gamecocks, Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns, Rutgers Scarlet Knights, South Alabama Jaguars, Arizona State Sun Devils, Louisville Cardinals, UTSA Roadrunners, Pittsburgh Panthers, Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, Washington Huskies, East Carolina Pirates, Arkansas Razorbacks, Marshall Thundering Herd, Fresno State Bulldogs, South Florida Bulls, Texas A&M Aggies, Memphis Tigers, USC Trojans, Bowling Green Falcons, Miami Hurricanes
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This weekend, 18 teams will play with conference championships on the line. Eleven of them got this far thanks to defenses that rank among the best in FBS in stop rate. What is stop rate? It's a basic measurement of success: the percentage of a defense's drives that end in punts, turnovers or a turnover on downs. Defensive coordinators have the same goal regardless of their scheme, opponent or conference: prevent points and get off the field. Stop rate is a simple metric but can offer a good reflection of a defense's effectiveness on a per-drive basis in today's faster-tempo game. Last year, national champ Michigan finished No. 1 with a stop rate of 81.6% in its games against FBS opponents. The top 25 teams in the final 2023 stop rate standings won a total of 249 games, with seven earning conference titles. Great teams find a way to get stops in critical situations. Stop rate is not an advanced stat and is no substitute for Bill Connelly's SP+ or other more comprehensive metrics. It's merely a different method for evaluating success on defense. Here are the final regular season stop rate standings for the 2024 season. We'll update this one more time at the end of the postseason. Texas moved up from No. 3 into the No. 1 spot this week ahead of its SEC championship game against Georgia. Texas A&M's offense did not score on any of its nine drives against the Longhorns on Saturday night and got stopped on three fourth-down conversions. With that dominant performance on the road, Texas moved ahead of Ohio State and Notre Dame in the stop rate standings. Ten more teams that rank among the top 30 in stop rate have a opportunity to win their conference this weekend: Miami (Ohio) (No. 9 in stop rate); Army (10); Iowa State (12); SMU (13); Penn State (16); Oregon (17); Ohio (18); UNLV (25); Clemson (26); and Tulane (29). Sam Houston -- at No. 8 overall -- now has the best stop rate among all Group of 5 defenses at 73.8%. The Bearkats rode that defense to a 9-3 season in their second year of competing at the FBS level, which just netted head coach K.C. Keeler the head job at Temple. Sam Houston's defensive coordinator, Skyler Cassity, was the youngest DC in FBS this season at 30 years old. The best stop rate defense in FBS over the past month wasn't Texas, by the way. Ohio's defense got stops on 87.5% of its drives in November and it rolls into the MAC championship game against Miami (Ohio) on a five-game win streak. Their title game on Saturday (12 p.m. ET, ESPN) should be a terrific defensive bout. The RedHawks also won out in November with stops on 83.3% of their drives. Indiana finished the regular season with the most improved stop rate defense in college football, going from No. 120 in FBS last season (54.3%) all the way to No. 5 (75.2%) in one year. Defensive coordinator Bryant Haines did a remarkable job with this group, pairing the right collection of starters from James Madison with the Hoosiers' returning talent to produce the best run defense in the country. Louisiana Tech (from 119th to 19th), Arizona State (128th to 53rd), Colorado (97th to 20th) and Houston (114thto 35th) also succeeded in flipping their fortunes on defense with a lot more stops in 2024. Which defenses suffered the greatest decline in stop rate this fall? Troy leads that list in sliding from 10th in FBS in 2023 (74%) to 115th (53%) at the end of its 4-8 regular season, but Florida State isn't far behind after arguably the worst season by a preseason top-10 team in college football history. The Seminoles were 14th in stop rate last season and are currently tied with Troy for 115th with a stop rate of 53%. They finished with a mere four takeaways over 11 games against FBS opponents. They're hoping newly hired defensive coordinator Tony White can get things fixed quickly. White achieved top-30 finishes in stop rate in each of his two seasons at Nebraska. Lastly, since these are the final regular season standings for stop rate, it's finally time to acknowledge Kent State and Purdue. The Golden Flashes finished with the worst stop rate in FBS during their 0-12 season at 39.4%. That's the fifth-worst season stop rate I've seen since I began tracking this statistic in 2017. Nobody has come close to topping 2018 UConn (35.1%), but Kent State's defense did allow 46 points per game against FBS opponents and touchdowns on 44% of their drives. Purdue finished last among Power 4 defenses in stop rate. The Boilermakers lost all 11 of their games against FBS opponents and finished with a stop rate of 40.8%. They weren't awful a year ago under head coach Ryan Walters, achieving a 60% stop rate in 2023, but the wheels fell off this fall as they got outscored by a margin of 339 points. Their next coach will have plenty of work to do in the portal to rebuild and reset. But as their in-state rival proved in 2024, it's not impossible these days to get things flipped fast. Note: All data courtesy of ESPN Research. Games against FCS opponents and end-of-half drives in which the opponent took a knee or ran out the clock were filtered out.
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