College football defensive stop rate after Week 9 - ESPN

Ohio State, Indiana and Oregon continue to lead the way in the Big Ten title race and look like easy picks to get into the College Football Playoff regardless of who wins the league. Michigan and USC are still ranked in the AP Top 25, too. But are we sleeping on Iowa?

The 6-2 Hawkeyes aren't ranked but are currently No. 17 in SP+ and have an opportunity to make some noise in November, led by a defense that is quickly rising up the national stop rate standings.

What is stop rate? It's a basic measurement of success: the percentage of a defense's drives that end in punts, turnovers or a turnover on downs. Defensive coordinators have the same goal regardless of their scheme, opponent or conference: prevent points and get off the field. Stop rate is a simple metric but can offer a good reflection of a defense's effectiveness on a per-drive basis in today's faster-tempo game.

Stop rate is not an advanced stat and is no substitute for Bill Connelly's SP+, FPI or other more comprehensive metrics. It's merely a different method for evaluating success on defense against FBS opponents. Here's the current leaderboard entering Week 10:

Following Week 9, Max Olson's defensive metric on how good a team is at stopping an opponent from scoring on each drive.

The Hawkeyes have had the No. 1 stop rate defense in October, getting stops on 88.2% of opponents' drives, and have climbed from No. 30 at the end of September to No. 6 this week after putting together a dominant performance Saturday in a 41-3 rout of Minnesota.

A week after overpowering Nebraska's defense, Minnesota couldn't get much going in Iowa City. The Gophers mustered 44 yards by halftime, went three-and-out six times and finished with three plays of 10-plus yards.