Was our Defense Good (Again) Last Year?

I wrote up an article this past May, talking about the defensive performance of UCLA under coach Walker in 2006. Despite a lot of accolades and hype after that season, there were quite a few fans questioning if the defense was all that good. Fast forward to January 2008, and a lot of fans are asking those same questions again. So, I have to ask, was our defense good (again) last year? The answer is (again) an emphatic yes!

Here is an e-mail I got from a reader, Ken, asking about our defense:

Well, last year in the blog you predicted great things for the Bruin D, based on one USC game. UCLA was 7-6 then, better than this years 6-7..and the defense was composed of seniors and is probably the best UCLA will field in the foreseeable future. USC appears to be on track to scoring more than 20+ points a game against the Bruins and UCLA is sporadic at best week to week. Did the defense cost Dorrell his job this year?

Before I tackle some of the assumptions at the beginning of the e-mail, let me answer the question at the end. Did the defense cost Dorrell his job? No, absolutely not. If anything, the defense was the only reason Karl wasn't fired sooner. It was UCLA's offensive numbers and the Bruins overall mediocre record during Dorrell's tenure that cost him the job.

Looking at UCLA's win and lose record is an easy, but rather poor, way to judge the defense. Football, probably more than any other sport, is a team game. It takes a good effort in all three phases ( offense, defense, and special teams) to produce wins. There is no doubt that the Bruins had an absolutely terrible offense this season. Terrible. Abysmal. Atrocious offense. Special teams was good. Defense was good. But the offense was the albatross around the neck of this team.

OK, let's look at some numbers.

UCLA's offense this year ranked 98th in the nation in terms of total offense. That's out of a 116 teams. That was also good for 9th in the conference, just ahead of lowly Stanford. Many people like to quote the old gridiron adage, "Defense wins championships". What a lot of people don't quote is the entire adage, which goes, "Offense wins games, but defense wins championships". For UCLA, the first part of that saying couldn't be more true. You got to put points on the board if you want to win games. Our offense this season didn't. The scoring offense was ranked 92nd in the nation and 9th in conference. You're not going to win many games when 9 of the 10 teams in your own conference score more points than you. What's even sadder about those scoring numbers is that they include the 3 touchdowns UCLA earned on special teams and the 2 earned on defense.

On the flip side of those numbers, are our defensive statistics. UCLA, this past season, ranked 30th in total defense. In the all important scoring defensive category, they ranked 32nd nationally, and that was good for 2nd in the conference. Only one team, Rose Bowl bound USC, gave up fewer points per game than the Bruins. When you look at those numbers compared to the offensive statistics, you have to conclude that the main reason UCLA was able to even win 6 games at all was because of the defense.

Did our defense have some poor performances? Absolutely. The Utah game wasn't exactly a shinning moment in the sun. Likewise, the 4th quarter of the Washington game saw a porous Bruin defense giving up way too many points. I also think UCLA could have won the game in Arizona, if it weren't for some bad coverage in the second half. I wouldn't call UCLA's defense great this last season. It could have been better.

Despite those poor performances, our defense did have some awesome games. Against Notre Dame, the defense absolutely stifled the Irish offense. Unfortunately, our boys were repeatedly put into horrible situations, like the Irish starting a drive on the UCLA 2-yard line and another on the UCLA 26-yard line. Even though the defense held Notre Dame to only 13 points and 140 yards, the Bruins lost.

Likewise, they shutout Oregon. They held USC, Oregon State, and BYU to a combined 7 points in the second halves of those games. They held a high powered ASU offense to numbers well below their season averages. They had the Bruins within one score against WSU going into the final minutes of the 4th quarter; that despite our offense recording 3-and-out after 3-and-out for most of the game. They gave up more yards then you might have liked in some of those games, but UCLA had every chance to win if the offense didn't have so many problems.

Against BYU, it was two forced fumbles by our defense that lead directly to 10 UCLA points. Another unforced fumble, by Terrance Austin on a punt, gave the Cougars the ball on the 14-yard line. Besides that easy touchdown, BYU only scored 10 points in what was a virtual road game for UCLA. I know some people like to criticize BYU because they play in the MWC and aren't a BCS bowl conference team. But they were conference champs and like Hawii and Boise State, they represent the creme of the crop of the non-BCS teams. With the parity that exists in college football today, beating a team like Brigham Young isn't easy.

Another interesting point raised by Ken was the improvement (or lack their of) in the defense over last season. UCLA had a lot of returning starters this season and the vast majority of those guys were Seniors. Yet the defense statistics weren't significantly better than 2006. Total defense in 2006 was ranked 35th and scoring was ranked 39th nationally. So why was that? I think there were a few reasons.

I'll touch on those in the second part of this article.