The Following quiz is intended to test your knowledge of the 2013 National Defensive Efficiency Ratings of the SEC, Utah State, and the more prominent 2013 opponents of Utah State from football outsiders.com. Note that the rankings are fully adjusted for SOS and quality of opponent.

As it relates to the essay part of the quiz I have filled out the first part of your answers to save you time but please expound if you are able.

Question 1: Please fill in the blank with the name of the team with the Corresponding Ranking. Cheating is encouraged: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/feidef2013.

Rank Team

Team A 6 _________________________
Team B 7 _________________________
Team C 8 _________________________
Team D 9 _________________________
Team E 10 _________________________
Team F 11 ___________________________
Team G 14 _________________________
Team H 20 _________________________
Team I 23 _________________________
Team J 25 _________________________
Team K 34 _________________________
Team L 38 _________________________
Team M 46 _________________________
Team N 53 _________________________
Team O 60 _________________________
Team P 64 _________________________
Team Q 87 _________________________
Team R 100 _________________________
Team S 114 _________________________

Question #2: In your opinion, what number of rankings must separate two teams in order to assume that it is more likely than not that a talent disparity may exist between the two squads defensive units.>
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Question: #3: Are there any teams with a rankings separation equal to or greater than the number you specified in your Response to Question #2 that you believe the lower ranked team had a more talented Defense in 2013.

Answer: Yes.
Teams: Tennessee vs. USU
Tennessee is an SEC team, our recruits have many, many stars and ______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Extra Credit: For any teams any teams with a rankings separation equal to or greater than the number you specified in your answer to Question 2 please list any lower ranked team that you believe will be more talented in 2014 and specifically list why, position by position.

Answer: Tennessee vs. USU
Tennessee is an SEC team, our recruits have more stars than I can count, USU looked very very bad and their DBs looked slow as Non-BCS snails in their spring scrimmage, and _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Question #4: Please Identify specifically any methodological flaws in Outsiders.com rankings you believe lead to inaccurate or skewed conclusions in the data using specific mathematical analysis.

Answer: Godly SEC teams cannot be ranked by the methodology of mortal man, it is heresy and blasphemy to compare them to teams of lesser realms especially if Tennessee is involved, the star level of SEC recruits is not factored in, and ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I look forward to grading your answers.

Natureboy,

Before you take the quiz it might be a good idea to post this on Volnation so you can get a good logical range of responses to help you formulate your own answers. I would do it but I don't have an account and I'm not much of a troll.

We are at 64 and you guys are at 9. I would not doubt for an instant that you guys fielded a better defense than we did last year. I suspect a better offense as well. Fortunately that does not carry over to this year so I have hope we can improve our numbers. Problem is a good portion of our 2nd team defense is likely not on campus yet. That poses a problem for us to be much improved by game 1. By the end of the year I would hope we are better but who knows. We will know by the end of November.

InspectorVol wrote:We are at 64 and you guys are at 9. I would not doubt for an instant that you guys fielded a better defense than we did last year. I suspect a better offense as well. Fortunately that does not carry over to this year so I have hope we can improve our numbers. Problem is a good portion of our 2nd team defense is likely not on campus yet. That poses a problem for us to be much improved by game 1. By the end of the year I would hope we are better but who knows. We will know by the end of November.

Good point. Last year is last year. You can't live off the merits of the past. This is a new season and a different team, for both sides.

InspectorVol wrote:We are at 64 and you guys are at 9. I would not doubt for an instant that you guys fielded a better defense than we did last year. I suspect a better offense as well. Fortunately that does not carry over to this year so I have hope we can improve our numbers. Problem is a good portion of our 2nd team defense is likely not on campus yet. That poses a problem for us to be much improved by game 1. By the end of the year I would hope we are better but who knows. We will know by the end of November.

The rational Vol fan has responded. Where is NatureBoy & Company. BTW I agree that significant changes are happening but the fundamentals of USU's D remain in place with some important back-end questions.

To help out Natureboy and his posse, here are the answers to #1. I did most of the work on the other responses for them so it should be easy:

Team A 6 USC
Team B 7 Alabama
Team C 8 Missouri
Team D 9 Utah State
Team E 10 Auburn
Team F 11 South Carolina
Team G 14 BYU
Team H 20 Florida (This doesn't appear to include FCS read option teams)
Team I 23 Mississippi
Team J 25 Mississippi State
Team K 34 Utah
Team L 38 LSU
Team M 46 Georgia
Team N 53 Vanderbilt
Team O 60 Northern Illinois
Team P 64 Tennessee
Team Q 87 Texas A&M
Team R 100 Arkansas
Team S 114 Kentucky

It is interesting that our Offensive opponents were sufficiently efficient to only drop us from 7 to 9 from Raw. As a further aside the MW is bad, bad, bad and then some on Defense excluding us, but we knew that.

To give us a good point of reference had we faced Tennessee in the bowl last year their D would have been comparable to Northern Illinois and their Offense comparable to us. We were 96 and they were 97. We were a really bad offensive team after losing Chuckie, Joe, K. Wimpy, TJ, and Reynolds and we played some of the nation's worst Defenses in that stretch. Would have made for an ugly game.

InspectorVol wrote:We are at 64 and you guys are at 9. I would not doubt for an instant that you guys fielded a better defense than we did last year. I suspect a better offense as well. Fortunately that does not carry over to this year so I have hope we can improve our numbers. Problem is a good portion of our 2nd team defense is likely not on campus yet. That poses a problem for us to be much improved by game 1. By the end of the year I would hope we are better but who knows. We will know by the end of November.

That's a good point, I think it benefits us that we are playing you the first week of the season. For what I've heard about your freshman class, it is really talented. If we were playing a little later in the season your younger kids would be more acclimated to the college game and thus present an even tougher challenge. Hopefully for you guys, you won't be counting on them too much and it will only effect your depth and special teams. Like you, I hope you guys are better by the end of the year too. I hope we beat you and then you don't lose again all year.

hickaggie wrote:To give us a good point of reference had we faced Tennessee in the bowl last year their D would have been comparable to Northern Illinois and their Offense comparable to us. We were 96 and they were 97. We were a really bad offensive team after losing Chuckie, Joe, K. Wimpy, TJ, and Reynolds and we played some of the nation's worst Defenses in that stretch. Would have made for an ugly game.

I know I'm going crazy here posting on my own thread but this is fascinating in and of itself: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/feioff2013

We faced the following offenses last year in order of opponent adjusted efficiency:

27 Fresno
28 USC
30-San Jose State
35 Utah
48-BYU
49-Boise
53 Northern Illinois
57- AFA
63-New Mexico
73-Wyoming
79-Colorado State
83-UNLV
92- Hawaii
'
We were worse than any of those offenses, as was Tennessee. The sub 60 teams put up 51 points against us total, with 24 points coming against UNLV. Excluding UNLV only 10 of those points came against our first string defense when the game was realistically within reach. Shows you how bad both USU and Tennessee were on Offense last year.

aggieblood wrote:

InspectorVol wrote:We are at 64 and you guys are at 9. I would not doubt for an instant that you guys fielded a better defense than we did last year. I suspect a better offense as well. Fortunately that does not carry over to this year so I have hope we can improve our numbers. Problem is a good portion of our 2nd team defense is likely not on campus yet. That poses a problem for us to be much improved by game 1. By the end of the year I would hope we are better but who knows. We will know by the end of November.

Good point. Last year is last year. You can't live off the merits of the past. This is a new season and a different team, for both sides.

I completely agree with Aggieblood! Nice post Blood. And very nice post from InspectorVol. Honestly I hope your team only loses 1 game all season and USU turns out to be just THAT GOOD! Undefeated AGGIES! Oh the headlines!

aggiesdidwhat??? wrote:

aggieblood wrote:

InspectorVol wrote:We are at 64 and you guys are at 9. I would not doubt for an instant that you guys fielded a better defense than we did last year. I suspect a better offense as well. Fortunately that does not carry over to this year so I have hope we can improve our numbers. Problem is a good portion of our 2nd team defense is likely not on campus yet. That poses a problem for us to be much improved by game 1. By the end of the year I would hope we are better but who knows. We will know by the end of November.

Good point. Last year is last year. You can't live off the merits of the past. This is a new season and a different team, for both sides.

I completely agree with Aggieblood! Nice post Blood. And very nice post from InspectorVol. Honestly I hope your team only loses 1 game all season and USU turns out to be just THAT GOOD! Undefeated AGGIES! Oh the headlines!

Its nice having expectations. If history is any guide Tennessee will be much improved and we will blow the game on some weird special teams miscue, but hey that's better than wondering how many injuries we would suffer at Nebraska, the general pre-Andersen money game thread.

hickaggie wrote:

aggiesdidwhat??? wrote:

aggieblood wrote:

InspectorVol wrote:We are at 64 and you guys are at 9. I would not doubt for an instant that you guys fielded a better defense than we did last year. I suspect a better offense as well. Fortunately that does not carry over to this year so I have hope we can improve our numbers. Problem is a good portion of our 2nd team defense is likely not on campus yet. That poses a problem for us to be much improved by game 1. By the end of the year I would hope we are better but who knows. We will know by the end of November.

Good point. Last year is last year. You can't live off the merits of the past. This is a new season and a different team, for both sides.

I completely agree with Aggieblood! Nice post Blood. And very nice post from InspectorVol. Honestly I hope your team only loses 1 game all season and USU turns out to be just THAT GOOD! Undefeated AGGIES! Oh the headlines!

Its nice having expectations. If history is any guide Tennessee will be much improved and we will blow the game on some weird special teams miscue, but hey that's better than wondering how many injuries we would suffer at Nebraska, the general pre-Andersen money game thread.

Well, unfortunately for us we lost all our kickers last year. We only lost one but he did everything. We will have a new punter, and place kicker this year. Maybe you guys could just fumble a lot or throw some easy pick 6's for us. Talk to your coach about making that happen. I might could send you a cracker barrel gift card if you can get that done.

Anyone else confused by how THIS became the most rational discussion of the matchup on the site?

lcrasmus wrote:Anyone else confused by how THIS became the most rational discussion of the matchup on the site?

You expect my troll topic to be more rational?


Sent from my iPhone

I would hope its because Natureboy and his crew have nothing to go on that's not addressed in the post. Football Outsiders uses a good model. It accounts for strength of schedule, SEC teams perform very strongly in the ratings, and Tennessee''s Defensive ranking here is much higher with the adjustment of schedule. What more are they going to say than the answers I started for them.

Who the hell knows what happens in an opener in college football. One corner consistently getting burned , a few blown coverages, a pick 6 ala BYU, and Tennessee puts up 40 on us. They have some great incoming athletes. We should never have lost to Utah last year but we did. More probable is that we have a great D coming back, but with some tweaks to the secondary that are going to give a revamped Tennessee a chance to score and that whoever wins the TO and special teams battle wins the game. We were very good in those departments last year so I like our chances.

But to say our D was not more talented last year than Tennessee's? Statistical indexes like this make the assertion laughable. More to the point ask the 3 top 30 offenses we faced (USC, Fresno, and SJSU how talented our D was.). They made no bones about it that we were as good or better than anyone they had faced in recent years. Or ask Jordan Lynch, who had the misfortune of having the announcers giving their obligatory accolades about how he is a "pro-player" to start the game and by the time it was done the same announcers wondering how he could have made a JC roster. Never has a defense destroyed the credentials of a guy who was so high in the Heisman voting so thoroughly unless it was A&M vs. Detmer the year he won the Heisman.

Here's to a great game InspectorVol. Wait it is really still 4 1/2 months away? Damn, we're obsessed and football deprived here.

hickaggie wrote:

hickaggie wrote:To give us a good point of reference had we faced Tennessee in the bowl last year their D would have been comparable to Northern Illinois and their Offense comparable to us. We were 96 and they were 97. We were a really bad offensive team after losing Chuckie, Joe, K. Wimpy, TJ, and Reynolds and we played some of the nation's worst Defenses in that stretch. Would have made for an ugly game.

I know I'm going crazy here posting on my own thread but this is fascinating in and of itself: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/feioff2013

We faced the following offenses last year in order of opponent adjusted efficiency:

27 Fresno
28 USC
30-San Jose State
35 Utah
48-BYU
49-Boise
53 Northern Illinois
57- AFA
63-New Mexico
73-Wyoming
79-Colorado State
83-UNLV
92- Hawaii
'
We were worse than any of those offenses, as was Tennessee. The sub 60 teams put up 51 points against us total, with 24 points coming against UNLV. Excluding UNLV only 10 of those points came against our first string defense when the game was realistically within reach. Shows you how bad both USU and Tennessee were on Offense last year.

Your post made me curious as to where Tennessee's opponents from last year would fall. Here they are in order.

2 - South Carolina
4 - Oregon
7 - Auburn
8 - Georgia
9 - Alabama
18 - Missouri
45 - Vanderbilt
61 - South Alabama
69 - Kentucky
91 - Western Kentucky
98 - Florida
NR -Austin Peay

6 teams in the top 20 (7 in the top 50) and 3 teams 90 or higher. To say it was a mixed-bag of a schedule would be an understatement. Ironically, UT beat the team with the highest rated offense and lost to the D-1 team with the lowest rated offense (based on adjusted efficiency).

You can see why Tennessee is such an attractive place for recruits. As an athlete you want to play the best and that is one heck of a schedule. I know our players love coming into those environments to play. I've now been to games in Austin and Lincoln (traveling with Wyoming fans) and wish I could make it out to Tennessee. Those games are once in a lifetime experience for western fans. We don't have a clue what football means to the South.