Defensive small ball plus/minus
The most cost-efficient college football defense?
If you’ve been following along recently you’ve seen me reason out that an innovative and cost-effective way to build a brutally efficient and asymmetrical offense for the NIL era is with something I named “neanderball plus math” or Nball+.
You can click this link and get most of the series:
Now we’re trying to do the same on defense.
In the first article of this series I went over a few existing strategies for trying to find an edge on defense. Analytics and basic reasoning make plain the following:
Small ball is cheaper than traditional defensive structures because sturdy, run-stopping D-linemen who can’t rush the passer and safeties are generally some of the cheaper players you can acquire.
I’ll also add that smart and versatile players make smart plays regardless of opponent. IQ seems to routinely get overlooked in what makes star players great and the all-time “instinctual” guys like say Troy Polamalu or Ed Reed, often turn out to have been exceptionally bright guys.
The rules of the game make chasing negative plays a cheat code IF you can do so without subjecting yourself to explosive plays.
If you can somehow scheme your way to getting turnovers, well those sure are helpful to a defense and winning.
Always protect the king (goal line) from checkmate.
So, if we can design a defense with loads of smart and versatile safety-types in the middle of the field which is good at inflicting negative plays and hunting turnovers, without giving up touchdowns, that’ll be similar to Nball+ in giving us a big leg up while avoiding costlier moves like, “get the freak Edge or D-tackle who cannot be blocked.”
We just need the scheme that actually achieves this.