In 2017, does Miami have a top 10 Defense?

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This is a good question. Unfortunately, the NCAA uses statistics like total defense and scoring defense to determine their rankings. That would be fine if everyone played the same teams. Miami has to play in the ACC, home to some of the nation's top offenses. Meanwhile teams in the SEC or Big 10 don't see the number of high powered offenses on a week in week out basis. I think the true measure of a defense should be the amount of yards/points you hold an opponent to under it's average. If you hold a team that's averaging 35 ppg to 20, it's more impressive than holding a team that averages 17 ppg to 10. At least that's the way that makes the most sense to me. If you consider that Miami held high scoring offenses FSU, UNC, Pitt and WVU far under their averages, you could make a point that Miami had a top ten defense in 2016.
 
This is a good question. Unfortunately, the NCAA uses statistics like total defense and scoring defense to determine their rankings. That would be fine if everyone played the same teams. Miami has to play in the ACC, home to some of the nation's top offenses. Meanwhile teams in the SEC or Big 10 don't see the number of high powered offenses on a week in week out basis. I think the true measure of a defense should be the amount of yards/points you hold an opponent to under it's average. If you hold a team that's averaging 35 ppg to 20, it's more impressive than holding a team that averages 17 ppg to 10. At least that's the way that makes the most sense to me. If you consider that Miami held high scoring offenses FSU, UNC, Pitt and WVU far under their averages, you could make a point that Miami had a top ten defense in 2016.

Great post. Couldn't agree more.
 
This is a good question. Unfortunately, the NCAA uses statistics like total defense and scoring defense to determine their rankings. That would be fine if everyone played the same teams. Miami has to play in the ACC, home to some of the nation's top offenses. Meanwhile teams in the SEC or Big 10 don't see the number of high powered offenses on a week in week out basis. I think the true measure of a defense should be the amount of yards/points you hold an opponent to under it's average. If you hold a team that's averaging 35 ppg to 20, it's more impressive than holding a team that averages 17 ppg to 10. At least that's the way that makes the most sense to me. If you consider that Miami held high scoring offenses FSU, UNC, Pitt and WVU far under their averages, you could make a point that Miami had a top ten defense in 2016.

yeah the refs took two touch downs from us in that game.
 
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Doesn't matter I would consider our defense "elite" this year for sure but it wasn't rated top 10 even though we were top 15 in a bunch of categories
 
This is a good question. Unfortunately, the NCAA uses statistics like total defense and scoring defense to determine their rankings. That would be fine if everyone played the same teams. Miami has to play in the ACC, home to some of the nation's top offenses. Meanwhile teams in the SEC or Big 10 don't see the number of high powered offenses on a week in week out basis. I think the true measure of a defense should be the amount of yards/points you hold an opponent to under it's average. If you hold a team that's averaging 35 ppg to 20, it's more impressive than holding a team that averages 17 ppg to 10. At least that's the way that makes the most sense to me. If you consider that Miami held high scoring offenses FSU, UNC, Pitt and WVU far under their averages, you could make a point that Miami had a top ten defense in 2016.
Really good stuff. It's partly why i was in complete shock when we shut out UNC in the 2nd half of our game. What? We also had a stellar game against Pitt. Finally, what we did against WVU was special.
 
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Best front 7 in the nation
Eh idk about that we should probably pump the brakes lol. You seen Bamas front 7 in recent years? You confident in saying Mcintosh and Norton are 1st rounders cuz im not. the fornt 7 is damng good but best in nation is a strecth
 
No. But I will say that we look good with the front seven. What is often overlooked is the DB play. Corn did a great job of setting an edge, so the safety knew where to go. A lot of people don’t notice those plays during the course of the game against the run. When you watch games on the other side of the field we weren't as good. Had we competed against better power rushing teams the defense would have been easily exposed. Now with a depleted DB backfield coming into 2017 this is a real concern because opponents will attack this weakness.
 
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No. But I will say that we look good with the front seven. What is often overlooked is the DB play. Corn did a great job of setting an edge, so the safety knew where to go. A lot of people don’t notice those plays during the course of the game against the run. When you watch games on the other side of the field we weren't as good. Had we competed against better power rushing teams the defense would have been easily exposed. Now with a depleted DB backfield coming into 2017 this is a real concern because opponents will attack this weakness.
What do you define as a "power rushing team" and why would that have exposed us?
 
Definitely top 5 in the front 7. A bunch of schools are losing playmakers in the their groups while we aren't really losing anyone and return a group that amassed really good stats including top 20 in sacks in the country and top 5 in tfl
 
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No. But I will say that we look good with the front seven. What is often overlooked is the DB play. Corn did a great job of setting an edge, so the safety knew where to go. A lot of people don’t notice those plays during the course of the game against the run. When you watch games on the other side of the field we weren't as good. Had we competed against better power rushing teams the defense would have been easily exposed. Now with a depleted DB backfield coming into 2017 this is a real concern because opponents will attack this weakness.
What do you define as a "power rushing team" and why would that have exposed us?

Good question. I think plays like 3:10 in the APST game would have killed us had we played teams like Bama and Clemson who would have had the personnel and coaches to exploit this. We are good but that's good with one solid CB kind of good. The defense that you are looking for to be top 10 like the Canes of old we need better play against the run with two or three solid CBs so that the safeties can be a factor. And we all know from history it don't take too many runs like that to kill this type of defense.

This year I think we went RPO crazy... At times it looked like we were playing an RPO defense the way we used our one CB, defending half the field... Heehee!!!

[video=youtube;co7eqtDR02k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co7eqtDR02k[/video]
 
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A stat I think is probably long past due is "points scored on the defense", not just scoring defense, which accounts for all points. I like the yardage stat just because of this factor. Yards given up are only on the defense. Points allowed, not necessarily. And, while I understand that everyone has points scored against them on turnovers and returns, it should still be excluded from DEFENSIVE stats.
 
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