The saying is, offense wins games, or puts fans in the stands but defense wins championships. For North Texas neither happened last year.

We are going to look at the NCAA stats for all three phases of the football team to see how North Texas compared to other Division I teams. To start off will be team defense, going on to offense and finally special teams.

Defensive Coordinator Gary DeLoach has a lot of work ahead of him this coming season if he is going to make the defense better in order to put North Texas in position to win games.  

During the second football season, which is recruiting, Head Coach Todd Dodge tried to recruit the players he and his coaches thought would help shore up certain positions and to fill in a lot of holes. There were plenty of both.

When looking at the NCAA Stats it becomes apparent the Eagle defense really was a dove when compared to the other 120 Division I defenses. Some Division II defenses actually had better stats in some areas.

To begin, the North Texas rushing defense ranked 104 out of the 120 Division 1-A teams. In 12 games they allowed 484 carries for 2,347 yards which is 4.85 yards per carry or 195.58 yards a game. The total yards allowed is over twice the amount of total yardage the #1 team in the nation gave up which was 1,013 yards on the season.

The passing defense faired better coming in ranked #54.  They gave up 216.75 passing yards per game for a season total of 2,601 yards. In twelve games there were 204 completions out of 359 passing attempts for a completion rate of 56.82%.  Each completion netted 12.75 yards a catch. Sixteen touchdowns came through the air.

North Texas had only seven interceptions grabbing them the #105 spot in that category.

Passing efficiency defense rated #60 spot with a 128.47 rating.

Scoring defense finds North Texas even further down the list at #112.  They gave up 54 touchdowns, 48 extra points and 17 field goals for the season total of 427 points or 35.58 points a game.

When it all is packaged together under total defense, North Texas allowed 843 plays for a total of 4,948 yards. Per play opponents averaged 5.87 yards and they over-ran the defense for 412.33 total yards a game putting them at the #97 slot out of the 120 teams.

North Texas was ranked #85 with several teams with eight fumble recoveries.

With 15 total turnovers gained, North Texas comes in at #111. For comparison the #1 team had 37 gained turnovers.

With 48 solo tackles and 19 assisted tackles for a loss of 206 yards, North Texas gets 4.79 yards loss per game putting them at the #98 position.

With one sack average per game North Texas is tied at #116. Those sacks total 79 yards. 

For the season, North Texas gave up 122 rushing first downs, 109 passing first downs, 18 first downs by penalties for a total of 249 first downs for the year. Breaking it down even further, they allowed 20.75 first downs a game. That ranks them at the #91 spot. For comparison, the #1 team gave up 12.38 first downs a game.  

There were 164 third down attempts on the North Texas defense with 62 being successful for a 37.80 % conversion rate putting them at #50.

With 21 fourth down attempts and 11 being successful, North Texas ended up ranked #72 on the NCAA list for allowing a 52.38% success rate in this catagory.

The most telling story about the team defense is what happened when an opponent got inside the twenty yard line. While most teams call this the red zone, for opponents it was more like the green light zone. Fifty-one times opponents made it inside the twenty yard line and 45 times they scored. Twenty-seven times they scored using the running game, nine times passing the ball and nine field goals. With a success rate of 88% North Texas ended up at the 98^th spot.

While there are bright spots on defense, the overall defense needs some heavy patching up to do if they are to move back to the front in the Sun Belt Conference.