Debut of 2008 BlitzIndex Defensive Rankings

September 14th, 2008 by Vince Mullins

One of the challenges of fantasy college football remains the immense size of the player pool and even the 120 or more teams that you must be aware of throughout the season. I originally designed the BlitzIndex to help me rationally identify which defenses were the hardest to move the ball against and in Year Three it has proven to be quite valuable in helping readers optimize their rosters.

For a refresher, the variables in the BlitzIndex equation are yards per play allowed (YPP), yards per point allowed (YPPt) and the more traditionl points per game allowed (PPG) . The OVERALL RANK is the result of equally weighting the national ranks of each of those inputs.

YPP was chosen to identify teams that give up big plays, YPPt illustrates how hard an offense needs to work to get in the endzone (in Iowa Hawkeyes case VERY HARD) ad PPG lets you know how many TDs to expect.

It also is a great tool to help find a free agent kicker when you need a cheap pickup. John Huss uses BlitzIndex quite a bit to setup his free agent articles called Feast or Famine.

Below the BlitzIndex is the VAR, which is the variance of national rank of (run ypg – pass ypg). This allows you to easily see that Texas A&M (-90) really isn’t a Top 20 pass defense – opponents can just run over them so they don’t bother to pass. Teams with a VAR with an absolute value over 50 show particular imbalance that might not scare you off playing a WR versus the same Aggies.

Without further adieu (full spreadsheet here)…

[TABLE=23]

[TABLE=24]

Later this week, I will take some more time to highlight items of interest. Last year some signals came up here that suggested the Kansas Jayhawks were for real when many questioned their strength of schedule – I see similar things in 2008 with Iowa who has stymied three teams on their way to 3-0. Air Force and Notre Dame defenses have played extremely well also.

UPDATE: If you have read this far, a huge hit video from FSU over Chattanooga.