Whether it knows it, the Georgia Tech defense hopes to emulate Temple.
The Yellow Jackets’ defensive mission for this season is to shed itself of its indulgent habits of 2014, when they plucked turnovers with stunning regularity, but otherwise were ineffective at slowing the opposition.
Tech celebrated the Orange Bowl championship with at least one unusual albatross. Since 2005, of the 140 FBS teams that have won 11 games or more in a season, the Jackets did so with the highest defensive third-down conversion rate of all of them, 46.1 percent.
The materials are there for defensive coordinator Ted Roof to lift his defense to a more competitive plane. Because of the experience brought by eight returning starters and other backups, Roof is further along in his installation of the defense than he was last year. Reviews from practices and scrimmages have been largely positive.
“As a defense, I just feel like we’re so much further ahead than we were last offseason, last preseason,” safety Jamal Golden said Saturday. “The way we’re running to the ball now, getting hats to the ball, is like I’ve never seen it before since I’ve been here at Tech. We try to get all 11 guys to the ball each snap and guys are running their tails off and trying to make a play.”
But what sort of improvement might be reasonably expected from Roof’s defense, which last season finished 111th in the country in yards per play (6.32)?
To attempt to answer the question, it might be worth considering how teams who fared similarly to Tech did the following season. In this case, a pool of 82 defenses that finished between 101st and 121st in yards per play in the 2010-13 seasons. (The set is not 84 teams deep because FBS expanded past 120 teams in 2012.)
The following season, 52 teams, or 63 percent, remained in the bottom third of FBS in yards per play. There were 23 teams (28 percent) who moved up into the middle third. Only seven defenses (nine percent) made it into the top third.
That 63 percent of teams kept their yard-hemorrhaging ways is not quite the forecast it might seem. Many of the teams at the bottom seem to be long-standing residents, such as New Mexico, New Mexico State and Colorado. Tech was — at least so goes the hope among the Jackets — an interloper. Tech tied for 64th in 2013, Roof’s first season, and was 74th in 2012. Hardly prize winners, but not bottom feeders.
Still, that only nine percent of those teams became certifiably upper-tier defenses speaks to the challenge awaiting the Jackets. So it is that the 2014 Temple Owls can be a beacon. Temple ranked 110th in 2013, its first season under coach Matt Rhule and defensive coordinator Phil Snow. A year later, the Owls ranked 11th, their yards-per-play rate having improved from 6.4 to 4.75. They ranked 20th in third-down efficiency and tied for 11th in takeaways.
For Tech, the ingredients are present — eight returning starters, the addition of previously ineligible linemen Jabari Hunt-Days and Kenderius Whitehead, a bank of knowledge and a drive to improve. Roof said that in the preseason he has seen both positive signs and steps in the wrong direction.
“We’ve got a long way to go, but I feel we’re working to get there,” he said.
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