Total defense is a terrible way to measure defenses
Sep 26, 2018, 9:18 AM
It doesn't adjust for opponent strength or for tempo (basically # of plays defended).
Just look the Army at Oklahoma game last Saturday. Army held OU to 21 points in regulation and 355 yards of offense which is way below their season average and looks awesome on paper, but then you see that OU only ran 40 plays the entire game and averaged 9 YPP. Giving up 9 YPP is terrible. Army's defense was NOT good against Oklahoma. So how did a bad defense hold OU to 21 points and 355 yards? They had the ball for 45 minutes and ran 87 plays including 78 rushes!
If you are interested in a much better defensive (and offensive) measure, check out S&P+ over on Football Outsiders. Bama is 12th in S&P+ defense and Virginia is 39th. That's still good for Virginia and i think Bronco Mendenhall is a good coach that's going to turn UVA into a tough out, but their defense definitely isn't better than Bama's at this point.