College football defensive stop rate at midseason - ESPN

Texas' defense currently ranks No. 1 in FBS in several categories: Scoring defense, total defense, yards per play and yards per attempt. Here's one more metric in which the top-ranked Longhorns are the best of the best at midseason: Stop rate

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.

Last year, national champ Michigan finished No. 1 with a defensive stop rate of 81.6% in its games against FBS opponents. The top 25 teams in the final 2023 stop rate standings won a total of 249 games, with seven taking home conference titles. Great teams find a way to get stops in critical situations.

To be clear, stop rate is not an advanced stat and is no substitute for Bill Connelly's SP+ or other more comprehensive metrics. It's merely a different method for evaluating success on defense.

Coming out of Week 7, Max Olson's defensive metric on how good a team is at stopping an opponent from scoring on each drive.

Six games in, Texas' defense has been remarkably successful. The Longhorns moved into the No. 1 spot in the stop rate standings with a stop rate of 87.1% following their 34-3 rout of No. 18 Oklahoma. Their rival got 12 drives against this unit and didn't reach the red zone until the final 30 seconds of the fourth quarter.

It's extremely difficult to sustain drives against Pete Kwiatkowski's crew. They've allowed 38 points over 75 drives, with two of the three