"The Big 12 doesn’t play defense" is a stereotype that isn’t getting any easier to overcome or squash, no matter how well the league's teams fared in bowl games. But we can be smarter about how we judge the effectiveness of Big 12 defenses.
At the start of the season, I began tracking Big 12 defenses by focusing on better metrics than points per game and yards per game. Yards per play is better than per game, but I didn’t care about yardage this season. Yards don’t always win the game. Teams that won the yardage margin went 34-11 in Big 12 play this season.