ak47

November 12th, 2015 at 2:55 PM ^

Well if the goal is to be a future nfl DB stopping an nfl qb to nfl wr is sort of the measuring stick.  He obviously played pretty well but also had enough completions against him to that being the sort of game where someone could point to his size being a limiting factor and drop him out of the 1st round.

jblaze

November 12th, 2015 at 11:28 AM ^

in that giving up (I don't remember the exact stat line) something like 7 catches for 110 yards isn't "good", but Lewis was on an island against a 1st round QB and 1st or 2nd round WR.

Perhaps he should have had some help, but to win 60%+ of the time 1-on-1 against 2 NFL caliber players is pretty solid.

ak47

November 12th, 2015 at 2:58 PM ^

Who exactly would be throwing passes in the NFL if not NFL QB's.  And who will he be covering if not NFL WR.  Burbridge will probably go in the 3rd or 4th rd and Cook will almost certainly not be a first year starter so if you are an NFL scout then seeing him play well but not shut down against the only nfl wr or qb he has faced this year would be a little flag and might be enough to drop him out of the 1st or 2nd rd.

Hail-Storm

November 12th, 2015 at 3:12 PM ^

I see NFL Qbs complete passes to NFL WRs over NFL CBs every week in the NFL.  Allowing a few completions a game doesn't mean the CB can't play at the NFL level.  Sometimes passes are made because a throw and move are perfect.  It took a lot of targets to get Burbridge those catches and yards. Targets don't include the times where Cook had to look off because it just wasn't there. 

ak47

November 12th, 2015 at 3:21 PM ^

I'm not the one saying he didn't play well and I think he is still an NFL caliber player but I was just pointing out the excuse that it was an nfl qb throwing to an nfl wr doesn't really impact how an nfl scout should view that game.  Lewis has been great this year but we have also faced a long line of turd qbs throwing to bad wrs behind offensive lines that are getting beat badly.  All of those things also help so if he played well but not shutdown level the only time he has gone up against nfl talent this year that could be enough to bump him from a 1st or 2nd rd grade to a 3rd or 4th rd grade. 

Hail-Storm

November 12th, 2015 at 1:57 PM ^

I don't get why they haven't shut out every opponent this year. Seriously, if they wanted to be great, they'd just stop all offenses from scoring. 

I also want to point out how they've allowed positive yardage in EVERY game. When people are talking about how good this defense is, they always seem to "forget" to mention all the times they gave up a yard or two on a run or pass play.

/s (shouldn't be necessary, but you never know)

jblaze

November 12th, 2015 at 11:26 AM ^

We play the 2 best offenses on our schedule in the next 3 weeks and have @ PSU, where Hack tends to be really good.

Let's wait until the end of the season before looking at any ranking.

Alumnus93

November 12th, 2015 at 11:49 AM ^

That we are the # 1  defense seems very under paraded... this has to be mentioned far more...  when msu had the top one, they were paraded as the greatest thing since sliced bread...

Harbaugh and Durkin in ONE OFFSEASON took them from what, 57th (?), to 1st ????

And they lost probably their most critical D player in Mone this year.

Make noise people......   this is what needs to be reverberated and get to that critical mass.

This is what'll really get the recruiting things swinging.

Sopwith

November 12th, 2015 at 12:18 PM ^

Chris Balas over at Rivals, who I might rename Dr. Doom if this keeps up, sounds pessimistic about Glasgow coming back this year, but at this point he's only citing "rumblings." Not good rumblings, though. LINK ($)

I hate rumblings.

ThadMattasagoblin

November 12th, 2015 at 3:42 PM ^

Lewis has been good in every game this year. When we've had trouble it's been the linebackers pass coverage. Just because Burbridge got a few catches on him doesn't mean he's bad. Is he supposed to not allow any completions at all? That's a tall order.

Yeoman

November 13th, 2015 at 1:43 AM ^

That Missouri mention got me over to the Fremeau website to see if it's confirmed by FEI or S&P+. It isn't--they're good, #22 and #14 respectively, but not top 5.

But even though Missouri isn't one of them, four of the top 8 defenses in the country according to dFEI are attached to offenses so bad that the teams have losing records: Boston College, Washington, West Virginia and Vanderbilt. B.C. is #3 and they're 1-7. They're #3 out of 128 on defense, #126 out of 128 on offense. And it's a tempo-adjusted stat--it's not that they're taking the air out of the ball.

Nothing like that has happened before. Before this year you have to go back to '08 to find even one team with a losing record and a top-ten defense. And nobody's ever been top-five on one side of the ball and bottom-five on the other. Not even RR could pull that off.

And on the offensive side the top two teams in the country, schedule-adjusted, are Bowling Green and Western Kentucky. That would be weird enough, but what's even stranger is that in the raw ranking before the schedule adjustment they're both behind Baylor, but Baylor's schedule has been so awful that the adjustment favors teams from the MAC and Sun Belt and moves them in front.

Can that be right? Is there something wrong with the published Fremeau numbers?

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/feioff