Chavis has to figure out way to improve Hogs’ ‘stop rate’ for any success

PHOTO BY TED McCLENNING | HITTHATLINE.COM

It’s the new buzz statistic football folks talk about when looking inside the numbers of a football team — Defensive Stop Rate.

The stop rate is pretty simply a way in this day of fast-paced offenses and higher scoring to gauge a team’s effectiveness in getting off the field.

It’s just the percentage of a defense’s drives that end in getting off the field without giving up any points.

Then there’s the points per drive that calculates how many points teams averaged giving up per drive.

In case you’re wondering Clemson led the country last year, according to numbers in a story in The Athletic recently. Mississippi State and Fresno State tied in fewest points per drive at 1.13.

Arkansas was No. 105 in the country, but that’s not last in the SEC. Ole Miss was the worst at No. 119 and Vanderbilt at No. 110. The Razorbacks, of course, lost to both of those teams so that pretty much means the misery was on both sides of the ball, but this statistic was interesting in several ways.

John Chavis knows this. Chad Morris knows this. Every Hog fan knows this.

Here’s a couple of things:

• Alabama (6) and Kentucky (10) were the only SEC teams in the first 10.

• The SEC had four teams in the top 25. The Crimson Tide and Wildcats, obviously, but Mississippi State (13) and LSU (25) were next in the league with Florida (26) and Auburn (27) just outside that.

As the world of college football has changed to a passing game (the top four passer ratings in history have occurred in the last three seasons) and teams are now averaging nationwide 7.4 yards per pass attempt, well, stops are the crucial thing.

Forget all those numbers you grew up viewing as important or benchmarks for gauging a defense.

The only thing that matters now is getting off the field without giving up points.

And Arkansas struggled with that last season. It is being addressed in the off-season by bringing in some better players (or at least ones who will buy into the new way of doing things).

Oh, and they also have to get the ones that are here to play to their max potential.

That didn’t happen all time last season, particularly with of the higher-rated players that had been in Fayetteville for a couple of years.

But, for whatever reason, the defense has to make a big leap in finding a way to get off the field.

No matter how good the offense is.