Interesting article in The Athletic today. The give the ranking of teams according to "Stop Rate", the percentage of a defense’s drives that end in punts, turnovers or a turnover on downs. NU is a respectable 46th. OSU is #1. Who is worst? You guessed it, UMass. From the article:
But the game you are not gonna want to miss on Saturday is an 11 a.m. kickoff on Big Ten Network. We can’t quite call this the Stop Rate Game of the Year, but it’s pretty darn close. It’s Northwestern vs. UMass.
Now why would we care about this ballgame between the 1-8 Wildcats and the 1-9 Minutemen, you ask? Well, UMass is stuck at the bottom of the stop rate standings this season. This defense is getting stops on just under 41 percent of their drives. And they only have two games left to try to move out of last place. They’re far enough behind the No. 129 ranked defense (New Mexico State) that they’d need to get stops on their next 17 drives to move up.
But Northwestern’s offense has as much trouble scoring as UMass’ defense does at stopping people from scoring. The Wildcats are scoring on 16 percent of their offensive drives this season, a rate that ranks second-worst in FBS, and they’re worst in the country in touchdown rate (9 percent of drives). UMass is the perfect foe to help them fix those woes. Or maybe, just maybe, Walt Bell’s crew is ready to actually get a few stops.
https://theathletic.com/1372648/2019/11/13/stop-rate-college-football-week-12/
But the game you are not gonna want to miss on Saturday is an 11 a.m. kickoff on Big Ten Network. We can’t quite call this the Stop Rate Game of the Year, but it’s pretty darn close. It’s Northwestern vs. UMass.
Now why would we care about this ballgame between the 1-8 Wildcats and the 1-9 Minutemen, you ask? Well, UMass is stuck at the bottom of the stop rate standings this season. This defense is getting stops on just under 41 percent of their drives. And they only have two games left to try to move out of last place. They’re far enough behind the No. 129 ranked defense (New Mexico State) that they’d need to get stops on their next 17 drives to move up.
But Northwestern’s offense has as much trouble scoring as UMass’ defense does at stopping people from scoring. The Wildcats are scoring on 16 percent of their offensive drives this season, a rate that ranks second-worst in FBS, and they’re worst in the country in touchdown rate (9 percent of drives). UMass is the perfect foe to help them fix those woes. Or maybe, just maybe, Walt Bell’s crew is ready to actually get a few stops.
https://theathletic.com/1372648/2019/11/13/stop-rate-college-football-week-12/
