You Shall Not Run

Unrelated but never unrelated (h/t @smartfootball)

Ranking things is fun, or at least so BuzzFeed tries to tell me every freaking day of my life.  And just like any prediction, rankings that attempt to predict the future are typically a fool’s errand. But we are fools, so ON WITH THE PREDICTING.

Trying to project year-to-year development in college football is tricky at best. But we can also try extrapolate by asking two relatively simple questions: (1) were they good at the thing last year, and (2) how many of the people who did the thing last year will be back this year?

The question of the day is this: which Big Ten team will have the best run defense in 2014?

Were they good last year?

This part is easy. There are many ways to break down how effective various run defenses were last year, and while none is perfect, together they give a pretty comprehensive picture. A few of the key measurements:

Yards per carry (sacks removed) - Pretty basic. When the opposing offense tried a run the ball, how far did they go?

Rushing Defensive S&P+ ranking– A fancy rejiggering of statistics based on outcomes for every running play a defense faces.

Adjusted Line Yards– A breakdown of yards per rush compared to what would be statistically expected, and then adjusted for level of competition.

And taking the Big Ten rankings for the various stats together, you get the following rough composite order. Being higher is better and being lower is worse (which you would have known anyway based on the teams at the top and bottom):

So 2013 defensive front performances look to shake out into a few tiers:

• Michigan State: They get a tier all their own.  I probably don’t have to explain this.
• Pretty good: Rutgers, Iowa, Wisconsin, Penn State
• Meh: Maryland, Michigan, Ohio State
• Butt (Not Jake Butt): Northwestern, Nebraska, Indiana, Minnesota, Purdue, Illinois

How much do they return?

Answering the question "how many starters from the front seven return?" is a little trickier. Take Michigan for example: how many defensive starters did they lose? They lost Jibreel Black and Quinton Washington, but weren’t they kind of the same guy? Do you count that as two starters lost, or one? In a way, it doesn’t matter, as we’re just trying to get a sense for what various teams lost, not necessarily to quantify it. However, to give a very rough estimate of the kind of production everyone is losing, I included the percentage of the team’s total tackles accounted for by guys I deemed to be departing starters from the front seven.

Denicos Allen is gone. Clearly MSU will now be terrible.

The obvious caveats. The first is that tackles are an inexact proxy for quality. A mediocre inside linebacker will usually make more tackles than a top-flight defensive tackle (Nebraska LB David Santos made 87 tackles. Penn State DT DaQuan Jones made 56. Jones was first team All-B1G and a 4^th round draft pick. Santos was terrible and was replaced by a freshman mid-season). However, we’re doing qualitative analysis with a quantitative kicker, not the reverse, so it’s helpful information that isn’t vital to our thesis. The second caveat is that the front seven aren’t the only people involved in run defense. Solid safety play is a big deal.

So, here’s where we are:

They run the gamut from returning everyone (Indiana) to returning no one (Wisconsin).

A pattern emerges

You may notice that the better defenses are the ones that lose more people. This makes intuitive sense; defenses with more seniors are, all things being equal, better. Of the four defenses we labeled as “MSU” or “Pretty Good,” three (MSU, Iowa, and Wisconsin) suffer serious losses, and I’d argue those were the three best run defenses last year.

So, who are the contenders for Best Run Defense for 2014?

Contenders based on returning talent

Michigan

• 4.22 YPC
• #33 S&P+
• #45 Adj. LY
• 6 returning starters

Michigan returns all of the major pieces of a run defense that was fair-to-good. Other than getting shredded by OSU for 393 yards at 8.5 YPC, they didn’t surrender more than 170 yards or 5 YPC in any of their other games. Add a healthy Jake Ryan, and if the defensive tackle play is good Michigan looks primed for a big year.

There is no advanced stat that appropriately values “beat running back to death with quarterback”.

Rutgers

• 3.82 YPC
• #22 S&P+
• #31 Adj. LY
• 6 returning starters

I love a good Rutgers joke as much as anyone (you know what’s a good Rutgers joke? Rutgers), but they actually had a solid run defense last year. They had the third-best YPC average (albeit against weaker competition), and they have some solid talent in the front seven with Darius Hamilton, WLB Steve Longa, and MLB Kevin Snyder. Granted, the run defense might just look good because Rutgers’ pass defense is so unbelievably bad, but such is life in Piscataway.

Maryland

• 4.54 YPC
• #42 S&P+
• #35 Adj. LY
• 7 returning starters

Like Rutgers, we like to make Maryland jokes, but the run defense was pretty solid, and they return their entire front seven. Darius Kilgo and Andre Monroe anchor their 3-4 defense and do an excellent job of keeping linebackers clean. If they can stay healthy (never a guarantee at Maryland these days), they will be very good again.

Penn State

• 4.67 YPC
• #8 S&P+, #13 Adj. LY
• 5 returning starters

Much like Michigan, Penn State had one implosion of a defensive game (also against Ohio State) and generally held up very well otherwise. You may recall 27-for-27 as a thing that happened. They lose DaQuan Jones, but they return C.J. Olaniyan and Deion Barnes. If MLB Mike Hull can avoid that always-troubling 37th major injury, Penn State could contend for top honors, though depth remains a concern.

Penn State reacted well to subtlety

Contenders based on history

Michigan State

• 3.61 YPC
• #2 S&P+
• #2 Adj. LY.
• 3 returning starters

State lost both starting defensive tackles, uber-productive (and TOTALLY NOT SUSPICIOUS IN ANY WAY) MIKE Max Bullough, and Denicos Allen. But I’m not an idiot, and the last thing I’m going to declare is that Michigan State will be taking some giant step back. The internet remembers such stupid declarations and revisits them. In the last 6 years, MSU’s rushing defense S&P+ rating (in chronological order) was #28, #23, #31, #5, #2, and #2. They have finished as the best rushing defense (in terms of YPC) in the Big Ten the last three years. Shilique Calhoun isn’t a great run-defender, but Marcus Rush and Taiwan Jones are pretty good, and… yeah. Again. Not an idiot.

Iowa

• 4.07 YPC
• #7 S&P+
• #14 Adj. LY
• 3 returning starters

Iowa loses their entire linebacking corp, along with their 322 combined tackles. The remaining linebackers on the roster had 29 tackles last year. Combined. Howeverm Iowa returns almost all of the best defensive lines in the conference, including two of the best defensive tackles in Carl Davis and Louis Trinca-Pasat. Iowa’s worst defensive rushing performance in the last six years was roughly on par with Michigan’s performance last year, and they have been a top-30 rushing defense almost every year. Ferentz has zombie powers, so it could happen.

Pretenders

Wisconsin

• 3.80 YPC
• #9 S&P+
• #17 Adj. LY
• 0 returning starters

The 2013 Wisconsin Badgers had a very good starting front seven. But so did the ’85 Bears. And those two groups have something in common: none of them will be lining up for Wisconsin in 2014. The Badgers didn’t just lose nominal starters, either: Chris Borland alone accounted for an estimated 793 tackles per game. They return SOME production along the DL in Konrad Zagzebski and Warren Herring, but this is almost entirely a reclamation job. Wisconsin doesn’t have a history of dominant rush defenses either; their average S&P+ rush defense form 2008-2012 was #33 in the country, and their average Big Ten rank in YPC over that time was a shade better than 6^th in the conference. Unless Gary Andersen is a wizard of some kind, regression beckons.

Hey, look, it’s Wisconsin’s front seven.

Nebraska

• 4.60 YPC
• #84 S&P+
• #88 Adj. LY
• 5 returning starters

Nebraska has the opposite problem Wisconsin had. The Huskers bring almost everyone back, but the guys they bring back weren’t very good last year. Nebraska was really good at getting to the QB last year (2^nd only to OSU), which combined with a soft schedule to make their raw yards-per-carry numbers look somewhat decent. But remove those sacks or take anything other than a surface glance, and Nebraska wasn’t good on the ground. Randy Gregory is a hell of a pass rusher, but he’s not great against the run. It’s unlikely Nebraska will be in the conversation at the end of the year.

Indiana

• 5.90 YPC
• #75 S&P+
• #49 Adj. LY
• 6 returning starters

Hey, they return a lot of guys. Lloyd Christmas dot jpg.

Not even pretending

Teams that weren’t good last year and have to replace significant portions of those not-good defenses

Northwestern

• 4.83 YPC
• #57 S&P+
• #77 Adj. LY
• 4 returning starters

Remember when they were ranked last year?

Minnesota

• 5.03 YPC
• #79 S&P+
• #58 Adj. LY
• 4 returning starters

Thieran Cochran is good. The rest of Minnesota is not good.

Purdue

• 5.60 YPC
• 76 S&P+
• #79 Adj. LY
• 3 returning starters

/Buuuuuuuuuuuurp.

Illinois

• 5.93 YPC
• #83 S&P+
• #62 Adj. LY
• 4 returning starters

Gave up over 250 yards in 7 different games. Only held one power conference team under 4 YPC. Gave up 29 rushing TDs. Was bad.

My answer is ‘I don’t have the first damn clue’

Ohio State

• 4.29 YPC
• #58 S&P+
• #96 (!!!) Adj. LY
• 6 returning starters

They had a good YPC average, but the advanced statistics say they were somewhere between bad and abysmal. They only lose one starter, but that starter (Ryan Shazier) made 144 tackles and 23.5 tackles for loss. They return theoretically one of the best lines on the country, but how good can it be if it was so bad against the run last year? I am perplexed.

Strictures require that I take a guess

My monkey-choosing-mutual-funds stab at the 2014 sack-free YPC rankings:

1. Michigan State
2. Michigan
3. Rutgers
4. Maryland
5. Penn State
6. Ohio State
7. Iowa
8. Wisconsin
9. Nebraska
10. Indiana
11. Northwestern
12. Minnesota
13. Purdue
14. Illinois