Ummmm......no
He "won" by playing in a shell of a conference after all the good teams were gone and after a 5 star Heisman QB went there.
You're right. The #2 ranked scoring defense had nothing to do with it. And the fourteen players picked in the last two drafts, they had nothing to do with it either.
It was only about his quarterback. And he shouldn't get any credit for landing him, either. Bridgewater was a Louisville lock since birth. He had a Johnny Unitas poster on his wall.
And let's forget about the elite defenses he built at Florida and South Carolina. Those defenses would never have been successful in a real conference.