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Introduction
In the spring we looked at offensive explosivity from a new lens as the rate a team score touchdowns from outside of the red zone. We referred to that new metric as TORZ. Today, we flip the script and look at a defense’s ability to prevent opposing offenses for scoring beyond the red zone.
Defensive explosivity allowed is something that is not often discussed as a common statistic and metric. But, just as some offenses are more explosive than others, as we outlined in our TORZ post a few months ago, and that this offensive explosivity is reproducible for the best team (see: Ohio State), we would expect that a defense’s ability to PREVENT or LIMIT explosivity is also a repeatable skill. Teams, like Iowa for example under defensive coordinator Phil Parker, have garner big-play-prevention reputations over the years. Which leads us to the $64,000 question: Just because a defense can stop big scoring plays from happening, does that mean they’re actually a good defense?
