Was Leavitt Really Elite?
How good was Jim Leavitt really? No, this isn’t a throw dirt on him because we didn’t get him part of the piece. I legitimately thought this beforehand.
This year Jim Leavitt turned an #Oregon D that ranked No. 115 in yards per play allowed and improved it up to No. 32. At CU, his defense ranked No. 16 when he left, up 104 spots from the year before he showed up in Boulder.
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) December 18, 2017
Those numbers look great on the surface but Oregon still gave up 5.07 ypp on defense and allowed 29 points per game on average. His Oregon defenses allowed touchdowns 58 percent of the time once teams got in the red zone while playing relatively weak schedule when it came to opposing offenses.
Oregon played two offenses ranked in the top 20 when it came to S&P rankings, and the next highest was No. 29. Here’s the full list below.
Jim Leavitt had a Charles Kelly 2015 yr....benefited from playing a lot of ehhh offenses....Oregon faced: FCS school, No. 81, No. 120, No. 37, No. 85, No. 57, No. 29, No. 16, No. 46, No. 23, No. 9, No. 100, No. 41 ranked S&P offenses this year...average No. 49.5 offense faced
— ChopChat.com (@ChopChat_) December 18, 2017
That’t not exactly gangbusters to be giving up 30 points on average a game.
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So that improvement was largely a by-product of Oregon being so terrible the year (nowhere to go but up) before coupled with a favorable schedule.
I think FSU can get more bang for its buck with someone else.