College football defensive stop rate at midseason

Penn State coach James Franklin hired Jim Knowles away from Ohio State this offseason with the hopes of putting together the best defense in college football and chasing a national championship in 2025.

Penn State had the No. 1 stop rate defense in the country going into its showdown with Oregon. After a brutal three-game stretch, the Franklin era is over in State College. It's hard to fathom how we got here, but the Nittany Lions' inability to get stops in critical moments clearly played a big role.

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.

Stop rate is not an advanced stat and is no substitute for Bill Connelly's SP+, FPI or other more comprehensive metrics. It's merely a different method for evaluating success on defense against FBS opponents. Here's the current leaderboard entering Week 8:

Penn State had a stop rate of 91% against FBS opponents entering Week 5. The only touchdowns Knowles' unit had surrendered through three games against Nevada, Florida International and FCS Villanova were scored in the final minute of the game against backups. While it's fair to call that one of the easier nonconference schedules in the country, there weren't many signs a collapse was coming soon.

Penn State held Dante Moore and Oregon to 17 points in regulation but couldn't get the overtime stops they needed to pull off the comeback win. Then they went out to the West Coast and got completely overwhelmed by a new playcaller in Jerry Neuheisel, an outstanding dual-threat effort from quarterback Nico Iamaleava, a 269-yard overall UCLA rushing performance and a stunning run of seven scores over the Bruins' first nine drives.

The Nittany Lions' performance against Northwestern wasn't as awful as the one against UCLA, but they still could not find a way to get off the field when it mattered. The Wildcats dominated time of possession in the first, third and fourth quarters and only punted three times. Penn State couldn't get a stop on an 11-play, 75-yard drive in the fourth quarter that included a third-and-8 conversion and put Northwestern ahead with less than 5 minutes left. Then they gave up two more conversions, on third-and-3 and second-and-9, and let the Wildcats run out the clock over a 3-minute drive to finish off the upset.

In fairness, Penn State's offense has plenty of issues of its own over the 3-3 start. But over this three-week stretch, Penn State's defense has a stop rate of 45.2%, which would rank 129th nationally over this span. This unit has allowed 21 third-down conversions, tied for fifth most in FBS over the past three weeks, plus five fourth-down conversions.

Considering what Knowles achieved at Ohio State in orchestrating the best stop rate defense in the country last season, with stops on 78.5% of drives against FBS opponents over a grueling 16-game season, it's difficult to comprehend. His defense totally stood up to Oregon for four quarters. Penn State was one stop away from being No. 1 or No. 2 in the country and perceived as a legitimate national title contender. And now Franklin is gone and Penn State is starting over.

A few more updates to note regarding this week's stop rate standings:

• Texas Tech is No. 1 in stop rate for the second week in a row. The Red Raiders gave up 17 points in the second quarter against Kansas but pitched the shutout the rest of the way and finished with a school-record nine sacks in a 42-17 rout.


• Texas moved up to No. 2 in stop rate after its 23-6 Red River triumph over Oklahoma. Pete Kwiatkowski's defense picked off John Mateer three times and secured two fourth-down stops in the fourth quarter. Texas coach Steve Sarkisian reminded reporters after the game that this was the third time in four years that the Longhorns allowed zero touchdowns against their rival.


• Ohio State is No. 3 in stop rate this week and finally gave up a touchdown in the red zone during its 34-16 road win at Illinois. The Illini punched one in on a fourth-and-goal at the 1 in the third quarter. Before that play, the Buckeyes had prevented touchdowns on all nine of its red zone drives and 24 plays inside its 10-yard line.


• Iowa moved up from No. 28 to No. 11 in this week's stop rate standings after getting 12 stops and allowing a mere 82 passing yards in a 37-0 road win over Wisconsin.


• Florida State's defense finished with just four stops against Pitt in a 34-31 home loss. The Seminoles have slid from 18th to 82nd in stop rate during their three-game losing streak.


• Now that UCLA is absolutely on fire under its interim staff and just pulled off a 38-13 road win at Michigan State, the Bruins no longer have the worst defense in stop rate among the Power 4. Boston College has lost five in a row and checks in at No. 135 nationally in stop rate this week at 41.5%.

Note: All data is courtesy of ESPN Research. Games against FCS opponents and end-of-half drives in which the opponent took a knee or ran out the clock were filtered out.br/]