Considering the game of football is played at a faster pace than ever before, limiting the number of snaps the defense has to be on the field is crucial to a team’s overall success.

By studying how often a defense limited a team’s offense to drives of six plays or less, a company called SportSource Analytics ran the numbers to come up with figures to determine the nation’s best coordinators at limiting lengthy offensive drives over a three-year period. The results were recently published by Jon Solomon of CBS Sports.

The results show this stat is important in measuring the overall success of a team, and of course more specifically, the defense’s. Clemson’s Brent Venables led the nation during that stretch, Houston’s Todd Orlando ranked No. 6, Ohio State’s Luck Fickell came in at No. 10, Baylor’s Phil Bennett at No. 11 and Oklahoma’s Mike Stoops at No. 15.

So which defensive coordinators from the SEC have been best at getting their defenders off the field over the last three seasons? Here’s the breakdown of every defensive coordinator in the SEC (with at least three years experience of being a coordinator). Even though many of them were at different schools during the three-year period, the numbers are still relevant in showing how well the coaches performed at their job in recent history.

(Numbers indicate national rank, while the percentage numbers indicate the percentage of offensive drives the coordinator’s defense limited to six plays or under)

  1. Dave Aranda, LSU – No. 3 (66.5%)
  2. Jeremy Pruitt, Alabama – No. 4 (64.9%)
  3. Bob Shoop, Tennessee – No. 8 (61.7%)
  4. Dave Womack, Ole Miss – No. 20 (59.1%)
  5. DeMonte Cross, Missouri – No. 26 (58.4%)
  6. John Chavis, Texas A&M – No. 34 (57.7%)
  7. Derek Mason, Vanderbilt – No. 39 (57.4%)
  8. Geoff Collins, Florida – No. 41 (57.2%)
  9. Robb Smith, Arkansas – No. 67 (53.6%)
  10. Kevin Steele, Auburn – No. 86 (52.1%)
  11. D.J. Elliott, Kentucky – No. 113 (49.2%)

Based on this information, LSU, Alabama, Tennessee and Missouri all made excellent hires at defensive coordinator this offseason, while Auburn likely could have done better than hiring Kevin Steele away from LSU.