The rule of three decides the Big 12 in 2022
With the Big 12 title all but decided, a familiar pattern has played out for the Big 12.
The Big 12 title race is all but over. Unless Kansas manages a miracle on the road against Kansas State this Saturday AND Texas defeats Baylor at home on Friday, we’ll be seeing TCU and Kansas State play for the 2022 Big 12 Championship.
Just as we all expected.
Wait, what’s that? No one expected it? Oh.
Here was the preseason poll by the Big 12 media compared to the Vegas odds:
Pretty embarrassing. At least Vegas saw TCU and Kansas State coming more than the Media did…sort of.
For my own part, I tried to use Space Force theory to guess at which teams were best positioned in the preseason to stand out. I liked Texas as the league frontrunner, which they failed to live up to largely because of quarterback play, and I thought West Virginia was a sleeper. The Mountaineers lost their good cornerback in Week 1 and eventually cratered. So much for that.
I at least sniffed out Oklahoma and Baylor as fraudulent. One of the keys to this season proved to be my own theory governing effective defense in a spread conference. The rule of three.
If you don’t recall the “rule of three for pass defense,” I wrote about it here:
The gist is this, to lock down spread offenses you need to be able to do one of two things consistently well. Cover up to three of a team’s teams’ top receivers in tight coverage with good defensive backs OR get pressure on the quarterback with a 3-man rush.
If you can basically play man coverage on up to three receivers on the field, it becomes easy to avoid bad matchups for an offense to live on. If you can get to the quarterback with a 3-man rush you can just bracket everyone and it’s not a big deal if there are weak spots in the secondary because no one is left isolated.
The league has trended towards rewarding good defensive teams over the last several years and since Oklahoma stopped playing overpowering offense with Lincoln Riley, it’s hard to win the league now without playing good defense. When Riley was on his game it didn’t super matter what anyone else did but now he’s ripping apart the Pac-12, it does.
The teams who can master the rule of three dynamic are coming out ahead.
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