The defense is giving up about the same yards per play as they were last year, give or take a few inches. The only difference is that this year, we're -2 on turnovers after two games as opposed to +4.
Missouri State was a really bad offense last year, and we gave up 414 yards. It's just that, during that game, we only gave up 9 points, so folks didn't panic as much.
LaLa was a top ten team last year in terms of yards per play on offense, and they have a pretty strong dual threat QB. We held them to under 400 yards, and the first half was pretty dominant, defensively.
The defense is getting scapegoated pretty hard right now, and they aren't nearly as bad as everyone thinks they are, at least statistically. We just don't have an Arthur Brown running around out there making us look really good.
Also, Waters is turning the ball over too much, and that's putting us in bad spots.
Points scored are kind of a big deal. Last year, we gave up 24 or more 5 times (twice we gave up just 24). We’ve given up 24 or more in both games (sure, 7 of that from LaLa was special teams, but whatever). This is not a good defense. The DL gets pushed around a lot, the LB’s are remarkably slow both to the ball and in coverage, the secondary is going to get absolutely torched this year, Zims is either trying to compensate for the rest of the secondary being bad or has just regressed, and the only one who looks like he plays with any effort is Mueller. They are getting scapegoated just fine.
The only surprise or highlight out of the last game for the defense was that Tanner’s finally put in a zone blitz concept whereby the DL/DT dropped back into coverage.
