Agreed.
I actually think we are entering a cycle where defenses are starting to catch up, but elite defense doesn’t look like it did 20 years ago. The best ones limit scoring but are still giving up some yardage and chunk plays. The days of holding a good offense to 150 yards and 6 points are probably long gone, unless that offense just has a catastrophic day with multiple turnovers. You do, however, see fewer and fewer shootouts with both teams scoring in the 40s, which seemingly became almost the norm in elite matchups between 2012 - 2022 or so.
Holding Georgia to 21 points, and holding their starting QB under 150 yards passing, in their own stadium, is impressive. They hung 44 on Tennessee on the road and Stockton had 300 yards. This means that our defense largely did what our particular scheme was designed to do. We’d like to see fewer chunk running plays, but on the whole this is what the system is more or less supposed to look like against elite competition. Limit explosive passing plays, generate turnovers, and get stops in the red zone. Philosophically somewhat similar to our approach under Joe Kines.
