Is an elite defense necessary to win championships or is an elite offense paired with a “requisite” defense the new formula for success? Nick Saban a few years back famously said, “Good defense does not beat good offense anymore.” Joel Klatt also thinks that an elite offense mixed with a top-25 defense is good enough to win a championship.
But what does the data say?
Here is the table that summarizes the final F+ offensive and defensive ratings of the teams winning the championship in the playoff era (2014—2021). I have chosen F+ because they combine FEI and SP+ ratings (and are thus supposed to be more robust) and are freely available.
| Year | Champion | F+ (offense) | F+ (defense) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Georgia | 3 | 1 |
| 2020 | Alabama | 1 | 8 |
| 2019 | LSU | 1 | 14 |
| 2018 | Clemson | 5 | 2 |
| 2017 | Alabama | 8 | 1 |
| 2016 | Clemson | 2 | 6 |
| 2015 | Alabama | 22 | 1 |
| 2014 | Ohio State | 2 | 15 |
Yes, a total of two teams (2014 and 2019) had defenses outside the top ten compared to the one team (2015) that had an offense outside the top ten. Considering the limited sample size, I don’t think we have enough evidence to support the hypothesis that defenses are no longer on equal footing to offenses when it comes to winning championships.
While putting this table together, I did discover a very interesting pattern. It looks like the champion has to be ‘elite’ (top-two) at least on one side of the ball. There has been no champion in the last eight years that had both offense and defense outside of top-two.
