To go along with our offensive rankings, here’s our weekly check of the defensive scoring efficiency of each SEC defense.

As usual, we track only in-conference games to avoid skewing the numbers with stronger/weaker non-conference schedules. 

To determine which defenses force opponents to work the hardest to score touchdowns, we tally up all of the defensive snaps run by each SEC squad, divide that number by the total number of rushing/passing TDs they have allowed, which gives us a simple plays-per-touchdown allowed ratio.

Below are the numbers for each SEC defense through Week Ten.



Pure Defensive Efficiency

Observations:

* Tennessee’s Monte Kiffin has been worth the money.  He’s led an injury-riddled defense to the top of the SEC. 

* Florida and Alabama flip-flop in this category just about every week.  Clearly, there are three great defenses in the SEC this year: Tennessee, Florida and Bama.

* Ole Miss has quietly put together one of the SEC’s toughest defenses to score against.  Kudos to Tyrone Nix for doing so… even if he’s done so under the radar.

* LSU isn’t dominant, but they’re darn good.

* It’s surprising that Vandy’s defense can still put up as much fight as it does considering the lack of help it gets from the ‘Dore offense.

* South Carolina’s defense — which has dealt with injuries and suspensions all year — continues to fall down this chart.

* Just looking at the numbers, I have a feeling this week’s Auburn-Georgia game is going to be a scorefest. 

* It’s time for Bobby Petrino to start recruiting some SEC caliber defenders to go with his top-ranked offense.  You can’t give up a touchdown every 19 plays in SEC games and expect to have a very good record.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Alabama, Homepage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.