Max Olson, ESPN Staff WriterDec 3, 2024, 11:15 AM ET
- Covers the Big 12
- Joined ESPN in 2012
- Graduate of the University of Nebraska
This weekend, 18 teams will play with conference championships on the line. Eleven of them got this far thanks to defenses that rank among the best in FBS in stop rate.
What is stop rate? It's a basic measurement of success: the percentage of a defense's drives that end in punts, turnovers or a turnover on downs. Defensive coordinators have the same goal regardless of their scheme, opponent or conference: prevent points and get off the field. Stop rate is a simple metric but can offer a good reflection of a defense's effectiveness on a per-drive basis in today's faster-tempo game.
Last year, national champ Michigan finished No. 1 with a stop rate of 81.6% in its games against FBS opponents. The top 25 teams in the final 2023 stop rate standings won a total of 249 games, with seven earning conference titles. Great teams find a way to get stops in critical situations.
Stop rate is not an advanced stat and is no substitute for Bill Connelly's SP+ or other more comprehensive metrics. It's merely a different method for evaluating success on defense.
Here are the final regular season stop rate standings for the 2024 season. We'll update this one more time at the end of the postseason.
Texas moved up from No. 3 into the No. 1 spot this week ahead of its SEC championship game against Georgia. Texas A&M's offense did not score on any of its nine drives against the Longhorns on Saturday night and got stopped on three fourth-down conversions. With that dominant performance on the road, Texas moved ahead of Ohio State and Notre Dame in the stop rate standings.
Ten more teams that rank among the top 30 in stop rate have a opportunity to win their conference this weekend: Miami (Ohio) (No. 9 in stop rate); Army (10); Iowa State (12); SMU (13); Penn State (16); Oregon (17); Ohio (18); UNLV (25); Clemson (26); and Tulane (29).
Sam Houston -- at No. 8 overall -- now has the best stop rate among all Group of 5 defenses at 73.8%. The Bearkats rode that defense to a 9-3 season in their second year of competing at the FBS level, which just netted head coach K.C. Keeler the head job at Temple. Sam Houston's defensive coordinator, Skyler Cassity, was the youngest DC in FBS this season at 30 years old.
The best stop rate defense in FBS over the past month wasn't Texas, by the way. Ohio's defense got stops on 87.5% of its drives in November and it rolls into the MAC championship game against Miami (Ohio) on a five-game win streak. Their title game on Saturday (12 p.m. ET, ESPN) should be a terrific defensive bout. The RedHawks also won out in November with stops on 83.3% of their drives.
Indiana finished the regular season with the most improved stop rate defense in college football, going from No. 120 in FBS last season (54.3%) all the way to No. 5 (75.2%) in one year. Defensive coordinator Bryant Haines did a remarkable job with this group, pairing the right collection of starters from James Madison with the Hoosiers' returning talent to produce the best run defense in the country.
Louisiana Tech (from 119th to 19th), Arizona State (128th to 53rd), Colorado (97th to 20th) and Houston (114thto 35th) also succeeded in flipping their fortunes on defense with a lot more stops in 2024.
Which defenses suffered the greatest decline in stop rate this fall? Troy leads that list in sliding from 10th in FBS in 2023 (74%) to 115th (53%) at the end of its 4-8 regular season, but Florida State isn't far behind after arguably the worst season by a preseason top-10 team in college football history.
The Seminoles were 14th in stop rate last season and are currently tied with Troy for 115th with a stop rate of 53%. They finished with a mere four takeaways over 11 games against FBS opponents. They're hoping newly hired defensive coordinator Tony White can get things fixed quickly. White achieved top-30 finishes in stop rate in each of his two seasons at Nebraska.
Lastly, since these are the final regular season standings for stop rate, it's finally time to acknowledge Kent State and Purdue.
The Golden Flashes finished with the worst stop rate in FBS during their 0-12 season at 39.4%. That's the fifth-worst season stop rate I've seen since I began tracking this statistic in 2017. Nobody has come close to topping 2018 UConn (35.1%), but Kent State's defense did allow 46 points per game against FBS opponents and touchdowns on 44% of their drives.
Purdue finished last among Power 4 defenses in stop rate. The Boilermakers lost all 11 of their games against FBS opponents and finished with a stop rate of 40.8%. They weren't awful a year ago under head coach Ryan Walters, achieving a 60% stop rate in 2023, but the wheels fell off this fall as they got outscored by a margin of 339 points.
Their next coach will have plenty of work to do in the portal to rebuild and reset. But as their in-state rival proved in 2024, it's not impossible these days to get things flipped fast.
Note: Games against FCS opponents and end-of-half drives in which the opponent took a knee or ran out the clock were filtered out.
