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Betting Stuff: The best, luckiest, and most opportunistic defenses of 2023
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Dan Lanning will say it multiple times throughout the season; takeaways and explosive plays are the most important components of a successful team. Be that on offense or defense, if your side can win in both the turnover and explosive play departments, you put yourself in a strong position to win a football game.
For our purposes today, we’re going to focus on the former. In some ways, takeaways are flukey. You can have the exact right call in place, have your personnel exactly where they need to be, and the ball bounces off hands for an incompletion rather than an interception. If you’ve ever tried to pick up a football bouncing in front of you, you know “graceful” ceases to exist. S*** happens.
But the really good defenses create opportunities for themselves. If you have your personnel in place and a defensive back gets his hands on a pass, that’s still a positive outcome. Hunting the ball is a personality trait. And it can be infectious.
An old editor of mine, and someone whom I respect a great deal in this space, called them “TakeOpps,” or takeaway opportunities. (Maybe someone else coined the shorthand, but not in my brain, so the credit is appropriately given here.) The theory is straightforward: defenses can expect to recover 50% of opponent fumbles and intercept 20% of the passes they defend. So, those defended passes and fumbles are opportunities regardless of the actual outcome.
Defenses that create a ton and give themselves better margin for error. Defenses that don’t, have to be sturdier on a down-to-down basis, which is just hard to do at this level.
And defenses can influence more with dedicated work. Coaching staffs can harp on defenders punching at the ball in scrums. Defensive line coaches can teach their guys to get their arms up to affect passing lanes. Brandon Dorlus, a defensive lineman who played all of 5 coverage snaps, led all Oregon defenders last fall with 9 pass breakups. That’s not happenstance, that’s coaching.
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Lanning’s last year as a defensive coordinator, Georgia had the fifth-highest TakeOpps percentage in the country. Roughly 9.6% of plays the Bulldogs defense faced in 2021 featured either a pass defended or a fumble.
In his first season at Oregon, the Ducks jumped from 73rd to 26th. Last fall, Oregon’s 9.9% TakeOpps rate ranked 12th in the country.
Secondary concerns toward the end of the season ultimately kept Oregon from a Pac-12 title and a College Football Playoff appearance. But this was a team that was capable of playing for a national title. Entering the 2024 season, Oregon feels like a lock to make the expanded CFP. And that’s not because of an elite defense; Oregon ranked 20th in efficiency last fall, good but not technically elite. The Ducks are optimized. (And loaded on offense, but I digress.)
Michigan, the national champion, had the ninth-highest TakeOpps percentage. Florida State ranked second.
In terms of turnover luck, Louisville, USC, Marshall, and Western Kentucky were by far the most fortunate defenses in 2022. Each of them produced at least 8 more takeaways than their expected value.
With the Trojans, the bend-don’t-break defense deployed by Alex Grinch desperately leaned on turnover production, and USC won 11 games on the strength of it. The Trojans produced 28 takeaways, though they had an average TakeOpps rate. And head coach Lincoln Riley kept Alex Grinch around after the season despite clear and obvious warning signs.
In 2023, the takeaways dried up and USC’s defense fell apart. USC gave up 34.4 points a game — the most in a season in program history. They finished 94th in TakeOpps rate and produced 4 fewer takeaways than expected.
So who were the biggest overachievers this year?
Bowling Green, Ohio, Tulsa, Maryland, UNLV, South Alabama, NC State, Oklahoma, Army, and UCLA all found themselves in the top 10. Penn State is also worth mentioning as a team that produced 5 more takeaways than expected while posting a TakeOpps rate that ranked 61st. UCLA ranked 63rd. Oklahoma was 47th. Those are 3 teams I would be keeping an eye on.
Penn State is in trouble if its defense suffers any slippage. Drew Allar faces a make-or-break season at quarterback and needs all the help he can get. Still, expectations are high for Penn State, which has to replace first-round NFL Draft picks on both sides of the line of scrimmage. BetMGM has +155 odds on Penn State’s season win total landing under 9.5, by the way.
At the other end, Florida State and Texas A&M stand out. Both programs had top-7 TakeOpps rates but finished with at least 9 fewer takeaways than expected — which were bottom-3 marks.
Florida State (9.5 wins, per BetMGM) has a ton of upside in 2024. Last year, the Seminoles’ defense was Playoff-caliber, particularly late in the year and especially once Jordan Travis went down. From Oct. 28 through the ACC title game, FSU gave up just 3.98 yards per play. Don’t let the Orange Bowl muddy the picture. If Florida State stays opportunistic and that translates to a few more actual takeaways, DJ Uiagalelei won’t have to do as much as folks think he will for the ‘Noles to be right back in the Playoff picture.
There’s no guarantee that because a team underperformed its expected value last year it’ll bounce back this year. The same goes for teams that overshot expected values. But there is clear and obvious value in takeaways; they are splash plays that change the complexion of games. And teams that put themselves in better positions to create those plays are teams to get behind.
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Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
