A lot of talk about Bateman as DC. Figured I’d put some thoughts down, as I compiled advanced stats on Jay’s units and I think there are some clear trends. All numbers below are percentiles (0-100) for each of the metrics (i.e. a score of 45, means the unit was 45th percentile in that particular metric).
TLDR Summary
I think it’s unlikely Jay will produce an elite defense, if he were to come back to Florida. Jay’s defenses give up too many big plays, especially against the pass to field an elite unit (or much above mediocre). That’s not to say he’s a terrible coach and couldn’t have some level of success here.
Elko’s quotes last night, could really apply to many of Jay’s defenses over the years:
Jay has never fielded an elite defense. And has only been above mediocre a couple of times, including this year (where TAMU fans want him fired)
Rushing Defense
TLDR Summary
I think it’s unlikely Jay will produce an elite defense, if he were to come back to Florida. Jay’s defenses give up too many big plays, especially against the pass to field an elite unit (or much above mediocre). That’s not to say he’s a terrible coach and couldn’t have some level of success here.
Elko’s quotes last night, could really apply to many of Jay’s defenses over the years:
- “The story of the game is the story of our season; we can’t cover the forward pass well enough to be a good football team”
- “Every time we play zone coverage we give up big plays. We have no concept of space. We have no concept of zone coverage, no concept of what we are doing. We have to play man-to man all the time.
- “We do not understand how to play zone coverage; it’s mind blowing”
- Expected Points Added (EPA) is a measure of success which defines the value of each play by the effect it has on the offense's likelihood to score – this is a good overall metric to look at the effectiveness of a given unit
- Success Rate shows the success of each play based on down and distance and is a good measure of down-to-down efficiency; success rate doesn’t look at how successful a particular play was (i.e. a conversion on 3rd down is successful regardless of whether it was a 50 yard TD or a 1 yard gain)
Jay has never fielded an elite defense. And has only been above mediocre a couple of times, including this year (where TAMU fans want him fired)
- One commonality in most of his defenses are giving up a lot of explosives. Only one year he’s been better than national average in preventing explosive plays in 9 years of DC data that I looked at. VERY hard to build a good defense when you consistently give up explosives
- On a down-to-down basis (i.e. success rate) his defenses have been solid, but not dominant by any means; certainly not enough to offset the number of explosives given up
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- Like others that run a similar style defense (Roberts, Armstrong, etc.), the defense struggles on 1st and 2nd downs, giving up a lot of big plays here
- If there is one shining star for Jay’s defenses, he has consistently been excellent on third down, largely driven by a long avg 3rd down distance for the opposing offense he faces; perhaps a result of a boom or bust approach to 1st down (stop them for no gain or they break off a big play)
Rushing Defense
- Rushing defense has largely been hit or miss, either very solid or pretty bad; have to wonder if he could have adapted a bit to prevent some of the lows, though likely a lot of this is talent-based
- Explosive runs are a common theme and have capped the upside of the unit as a run stopping group, even when they were good on a down-to-down basis
- Ability to stuff the run are pretty critical to overall defensive performance, so Jay can get to his third down stuff which is good
- Passing defense has largely been mediocre or worse, with only a couple of seasons above average
- The Achilles heel here is giving up explosive pass plays…where Jay’s units have often performed in bottom 1/3rd of the country and at their best are mediocre
- Even units that have otherwise been very solid against the pass (TAMU) on a down-to-down basis have given up enough explosives to really struggle at times – TAMU is last in the SEC in number of 30+ yard pass plays given up
- This is very problematic in an age where the predominant strategy many top defenses are using is to try to limit big plays…
