Ryan Walters’ defense was impressive with its numbers last year. I shared this at the end of last season, but it’s important, so I’ll share it again.
As I had mentioned before:
On the baseline, you can see that the stats are really not that much different. Except in the Red Zone, Points Per Game, Opponents Yards Per Game, Third-Down Conversions, and Opponent Time of Possession. We can argue that the Virginia game is really an outlier in all of this. Leaving the stats from Virginia’s league-leading offense, these numbers really change, where Illinois is now holding teams to 19.