College football defensive stop rate ahead of Week 6 - ESPN

The ups and downs of Arch Manning's first season as Texas' starting quarterback are commanding all the national attention, as expected. But don't sleep on the hot start by the Longhorns' loaded defense. Texas debuts as No. 1 in our initial stop rate standings for the 2025 season.

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.

National champ Ohio State finished No. 1 in stop rate last season at 78.5%, a remarkable feat considering the Buckeyes ended up playing a 16-game schedule that included six top-5 opponents. Last year's top 25 teams in stop rate won a total of 238 games, with 12 teams winning 10 or more games. Five of the top six in stop rate advanced to the College Football Playoff.

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 6:

Coming out of Week 5, Max Olson's defensive metric on how good a team is at stopping an opponent from scoring on each drive.

The Longhorns are currently leading the way with a stop rate of 89.4% against FBS opponents. Pete Kwiatkowski's defense has played 47 drives and has given up four touchdowns and one field goal through four games. They're giving up the fewest points per drive (0.66) and fewest yards per drive (17.5)