Rushing defenses improving in general (!?)

Are more teams getting better at stopping the run? 

If you look at the games, only Wisconsin racked up the type of rushing yards we've grown accustomed to seeing in the years past. Lesser non-conference teams going up against a Big Ten team would usually give up 200+ yards and literally get run over. Here are this week's data.

Game      Rushing Yds (Big Ten if winner)        Yds per carry

1. Wisc - U Buffalo        314           7.9 
2. Illinois - Toledo          163           4.7
3. OSU - Indiana            143          4.6
4. Maryland - Towson    160           4.6
5. PSU - West Virginia   146           4.2
6. MSU - CMU               127           4.1
7. UM - ECU                  122           3.9      
8. Purdue - Fresno St    109           3.6             Lost
9. Rutgers - NU              122          2.8
10. Iowa - UT State          88            2.4
11. Minn - Neb                 55             2.2

The 8 non-Big Ten opponents ran the gamut from Big 12 (West Virginia), Mountain West (Fresno State, Utah State), MAC (U Buffalo, Toledo, CMU), American Athletic Conference (ECU) and Colonial Athletic Association (Townson).

We would expect the Big Ten teams to be experienced dealing with powerful running attacks, but it seems that many teams across many conferences can put up credible defenses against the run - at least statistically. 

The one outlier was the Wisconsin U Buffalo game where if one didn't know better one would assume it was a traditional Badger attack - and not a new approach

Are more teams capable to clogging running attacks now because of better coaching and players? It isn't a new idea, of stacking the box, but in the past the lesser teams would try but still end up getting ground down.

Excluding the COVID 2020 year we have these data from the UM openers of the past few years.

2022 Colorado State  234 yds   5.9 average

2021 WMU                  335 yds  7.8 

2019 Mid Tenn State    233 yds   5.3

Are CFB teams in general improving when asked to stop the run or are teams perhaps quicker in the Big Ten to switch and throw more? It seemed that way watching the game at the Big House, that rather than spend a whole quarter smashing repeatedly between the tackles, the offense quickly switched to throwing more often on first down.