Like a lot of Conference USA defenses, Middle Tennessee struggles with (arguably) the two most important parts of a defense: giving up points and giving up yards. Ignoring FCS games, the Blue Raiders have given up 32.6 points per game and 438 yards per game, the 26th worst and 25th worst in college football respectively.
But the MTSU defense can be sneakily good in places you often wouldn’t expect. Like in the red zone:
That’s not red zone touchdown percentage. That's red zone scoring percentage.
This means that over a quarter of the time a team reaches the red zone against the Blue Raiders, they come up empty with no points.
Of course, there are a couple of ways to achieve that success. A good red zone team could force field goals that end up missed or blocked. But more often than not, turnovers play a large factor in red zone scoring stats, which brings me to the next area where the Middle Tennessee defense succeeds:
The Blue Raider defense creates more opportunities for their offense.
If we focus only on the interception half of the turnover stat, things don’t look any less bleak for the Bulldogs. One out of every 29 pass attempts thrown against Middle Tennessee has been picked off:
Four weeks ago, this would be especially concerning. Parker McNeil started the year with a pesky problem of throwing to the other team. Although he has yet to throw an interception in conference play, the C-USA teams he did face are in the bottom half of the chart above. If McNeil is healthy enough to start, how will he look against a team that has a knack for INTs?
Landry Lyddy is the other option at QB. But redshirt issues aside, the true freshman had some questionable throws in his first start at FIU that may have been picked off by the Blue Raiders.
Of course, all signs point to Lyddy being the future of this team. Mistakes will happen and he will learn from them. But what concerns me most about this Middle Tennessee defense is their ability to get to the quarterback. Keeping your future star quarterback healthy so that he’s able to learn for the future seems paramount.
Regardless of who starts at the most important position in sports, the Louisiana Tech offense has their work cut out for them. The Bulldogs have excelled at gaining yards and putting up points these past few weeks, but this Blue Raider defense may be the best we’ve seen since South Alabama.
And speaking of South Alabama, each of the four charts in this post shows nearly identical stats for MTSU and USA. The same Jaguar defense that held Tech to a season-low 14 points, a season-low 308 total offensive yards, and forced a season-high four interceptions.
If there’s any analog for what the Bulldogs will face on Saturday, it’s the defense that was the cause of the worst Tech offensive performance in 2022.
So this week will be a test for this young Louisiana Tech passing game. Have they truly improved in conference play? Or will we see the return of the offense that struggled in the early season?
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Nathan is also a contributor to gtpdd.dog, a lighthearted Louisiana Tech blog. Be sure to check out @gotechplsdntdie on Twitter.
