The 2015 Oklahoma State Defense Was Worst Statistically Since 2008

We should chat about the Oklahoma State defense for a bit. Glenn Spencer and Co. got railroaded there at the very end of the year and ended up ranked No. 70 in the country in defensive efficiency — that is points allowed per possession — at 2.20 per possession.

That’s the worst number OSU has allowed since 2008. Lower is better on this graph. All numbers found here.

Now, they were facing some elite offensive teams (which matters) so I went back and looked at how many offenses OSU kept below their season average in points scored per drive. Turns out, almost all of them.

One thing to note is that these numbers are a bit skewed because I took into account every single drive in a game for my numbers and BCF Toys, which I used for teams’ season average, tosses out garbage time drives. But still, it works.

What we’re looking at here: The black star is each team’s average points scored per drive on offense for the entire year and the orange dot is what each team did against Oklahoma State.

So OSU’s defense held every team except Kansas State, Iowa State and OU below its season average. That’s pretty good. That Baylor number looks bad, but Baylor was averaging four points a drive until it boarded Noah’s Ark in Ft. Worth last week.

The Iowa State and OU numbers are obviously really bad. You can’t let Iowa State display the same efficiency as Baylor. That’s terrible. And it honestly felt like OU scored on every drive.

I’m not sure what my takeaway is here. On one hand, that vaunted Glenn Spencer defense couldn’t crack the top 60 in points per drive allowed over the course of a full season and showed out as the worst defense since 2008 (!!)

Now, I do think QB play was much better in the Big 12 overall than it has been for a few seasons so I think that makes this year’s defense better than last year’s (it also still has the bowl game to get better or worse), but it’s certainly not the D we thought it was back in October.