For the first time this season, Tech will face off against a team entering the game with a winning record when the Bulldogs host Southern Miss this Saturday. But what separates the Golden Eagles from other opponents Tech has encountered this year is not so much the wins, but the potent passing offense that has brought them that success.
While USM has only dialed up passing plays 48% of the time (5th highest in C-USA), they have made the most of those throws with 11.1 yards per pass attempt, the most in C-USA and the 5th most in the country:
And if you remember last year, Southern Miss's starting quarterback (and former Bulldog) Jack Abraham led college football last year with a 73.1% completion percentage. So it's not surprising that a returning Abraham has kept the Eagles in the top five in the nation with a team completion percentage of 71.8%.
Add all that together, and USM has the 6th best passing offense in college football:
For the Bulldog pass defense, its sort of a good-news-bad-news situation.
First the bad news: Tech has given up 246 passing yards per game, which puts them at 87th in the nation. But the good news is that Tech gave up that many yards partially due to the sheer quantity of passing plays their opponents called to stay in the game. Excluding FCS games, Tech faced the 12th most pass attempts per game in all of college football, and by far the most in C-USA:
And while Tech has faced an average of 5.6 more attempts per game than the next closest C-USA team, they have only allowed a 6.5 yard per pass average on the season, which is third best in C-USA (only behind WKU and UAB) and 33rd best in college football.
That would also make Tech the second best pass defense Southern Miss has faced, behind Alabama.
The "bend don't break" defense has drawn a lot of criticism, and sometimes rightfully so. But although Tech has played some weak opponents in their first half-season, the passing defense has been good enough to help bring Tech to it's 5-1 record.
But as they face a Southern Miss team going for their own fifth win of the season, and fifth straight win over the Bulldogs, this pass defense will face it's first true conference test.
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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.
