A few years back, the folks over at Tomahawk Nation came up with a startlingly simple yet powerful insight about modern defenses - the bigger they are, the more successful they tend to be. Well, the insight itself wasn't revolutionary but they took the time to go back and look at the numbers to try and quantify the idea. And what they found was pretty darned interesting.
They discovered that eighteen of the 20 best defenses in all of college football in 2009 had a front-7 (DL+LB) weight of more than 1,780 lbs. Furthermore all of the top ten defensive units were in excess of that mark. Now not only was Alabama the largest squad on the the list it was the only true 3-4 team.
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