I think everyone has realized at this point it takes more than an elite offense to win a National Championship. We’ve put out some of the worst defenses in college football over the last couple years and as Birm said, we can get used to elite defensive recruits turning us away until that gets squared away.
With Ryan Day recently saying he expects a top 10 defense after his Jim Knowles hire, I was wondering where defenses (in points allowed per game) were ranked for the most recent national championship winners. What does it take to compete in the modern college football era? For those curious, check out the graphic below.
I was actually a little surprised to see what was mostly top 10 and then the random jump to about 30 for 2014 OSU and 2019 LSU. If I remember correctly, that 2019 LSU team didn’t really get rolling until the 2nd half of the season so its ranking may be a little skewed at #32. It was also a little overwhelming seeing that half of the last 10 championship winners had a #1 ranked defense.
After seeing this graphic, where do you guys reasonably think Ohio State’s defense should be to top the Alabama’s and Georgia’s of the world? I would say Ryan Day is correct, it seems to be top 10 to me. Is that reasonable given our high powered offense would probably keep our defense on the field longer?
