Long story short. The Texas defensive coaches pay attention to certain stats not produced by Huckleberry. They’ve gotten better at those stats. The dilettantes at Pulling Teeth are totally incredulous that someone can hold Nick Florence to less than 400 yards passing and that people from Austin don’t want to visit Branson.
So let’s take a look at the (drum roll) 2009 Defensive Stats That Matter! and mock Missouri’s defensive futility in the process.
| Team | YPA | 3rd Down % | Red Zone % | Points |
| 2007 | 6.98 | 38.9% | 77.7% | 25.3 |
| 2008 | 6.87 | 34.97% | 74% | 18.77 |
| 2009 | 5.11 | 24.48% | 79% | 12.6 |
Seventh nationally in scoring, second in ypa, first in 3rd down ptc and a horrible 35th in red zone ptc. I’m cool with the red zone ptc because opponents have only gotten in the red zone 19 times and probably a third of those were due to the offense or special teams. Or because Texas Tech holds.
They may be somewhat skewed by not having to face Sam Bradford for more than a couple of drives(Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!), Jermaine Gresham and Dez Bryant. But. Will Muschamp has done it despite losing three defensive linemen to the NFL, losing his starting MLB for the season and having at least three other starters miss time because of injuries.
And we’ll return between 7-8 starters along with a bunch of backups for next year.
Do we realize how good we’ve got it?