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Betting Stuff: The best, luckiest, and most opportunistic defenses of 2024
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Dabo Swinney is super all in on the 2025 season.
Clemson won another ACC title last season — its eighth in the last 10 years — but the Tigers never really felt like a threat to win the College Football Playoff and got run over in the first round by Texas.
The Longhorns got 146 yards from Jaydon Blue, 110 yards from Quintrevion Wisner, and finished with a 6.7 yards-per-carry average. They had 8 explosive run plays. While Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik threw for 336 yards, Clemson trailed 31-10 deep into the third quarter.
Clemson was a flawed team in more ways than one last season, so singling out the run defense as “the” reason why the Tigers got bounced so early in the CFP is a bit misleading. But the run defense was certainly a reason. And it was a persistent issue all season long.
Per Game on Paper, Clemson ranked 113th nationally in EPA per run faced. They were fairly average on the line of scrimmage (58th percentile in line yards allowed) but gave up explosive run plays like candy. Missed fits and missed tackles from linebackers and secondary players were a problem all year. Seven players had at least 9 missed tackles, per PFF.
So, when the season came to a close, Swinney parted ways with Wes Goodwin, who had coordinated the Clemson defense for the last 3 years. A week later, Swinney swiped Tom Allen away from Penn State.
Allen enjoyed major success in his lone season as the Nittany Lions’ defensive coordinator. Penn State ranked sixth nationally in EPA per run faced and closed the year in the CFP semifinals. Allen took over for Manny Diaz, who coordinated one of the best defenses in football during the 2023 year, and Penn State did not miss a beat.
The hope is that Allen can revive Clemson’s sagging defense.
Since 2015, Clemson has ranked 11th or better in Game on Paper’s opponent-adjusted EPA per play metric 8 times.
The Tigers were a top-10 unit every year from 2017-2021, dipped to 17th in 2022, rebounded to eighth in 2023, and tumbled down to 46th last fall.
Understanding the opportunity in front of him, Swinney knew he had to get the defense right. Klubnik returns in 2025 alongside his offensive coordinator, a tantalizing trio of pass-catchers, and a veteran pair of tackles. Clemson also returns 13 of the 18 players who saw at least 200 snaps on the defensive side of the football last season.
Allen has built his reputation on defense. Some feel Clemson upgraded its coaching staff. I tend to agree.
But I am curious what sort of stylistic changes are coming. Clemson’s success on that side of the football speaks for itself over the last decade, and a key part of that has been an aggressive and opportunistic style of play.
In each of the last 4 seasons, Clemson has ranked inside the top 15 nationally in TakeOpps rate. In 2023, the Tigers led the country. In 2024, they finished fourth.
An old editor of mine coined the phrase, at least in my purview. Defenses can expect to recover 50% of opponent fumbles and intercept 20% of the passes they defend. Teams can get lucky in the turnover department when the ball just bounces their way, but some of the top defensive minds in the game are obsessed with creating their own luck.
More opportunities equals more turnovers. That’s the working theory. And defenses that don’t create enough opportunities for splash plays have to be sturdier on a down-to-down basis, which is tough to do in college football.
A team’s TakeOpps rate is simply its takeaway opportunities against its overall defensive snaps. The FBS average was 8.0%. Here are your top 10 from the 2024 season:
- Minnesota — 11.2%
- Memphis — 10.9%
- Notre Dame — 10.9%
- Clemson — 10.9%
- Oregon — 10.8%
- Colorado State — 10.7%
- Texas — 10.7%
- UNLV — 10.5%
- Utah — 10.5%
- Ole Miss — 10.4%
Penn State ranked 45th. Tom Allen’s last Indiana team in 2023 ranked 98th, which was up from 107th the year prior.
According to Bill Connelly, Clemson returns more production than any other team in the FBS in 2025. The Tigers bring back 75% of their defensive production, which ranks seventh in the country. Teams with a high degree of continuity tend to improve. If Clemson takes a major step forward, this Playoff team becomes a legitimate national title contender.
And after Klubnik’s breakthrough season in 2024, the big question rests with Allen and the defense. Clemson averaged 35 points a game last season. Give Klubnik a couple of shorter fields and extra possessions to work with, could this group touch 40 per game in 2025?
Clemson’s win total in 2025 is 9.5 at BetMGM, with a +125 price on the over. The Tigers are considered to be more of a darkhorse in the national title picture, with +2000 odds to win the CFP.
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Oregon also jumps out. Under coach Dan Lanning, the Ducks have preached that explosives and takeaways decide ball games. In Lanning’s last year as a defensive coordinator for Georgia, the Bulldogs had the fifth-highest TakeOpps percentage in the country. Roughly 9.6% of plays the Bulldogs defense faced in 2021 featured either a pass defended or a fumble.
In his first season at Oregon, the Ducks jumped from 73rd to 26th. In Year 2, Oregon’s 9.9% TakeOpps rate ranked 12th in the country. In Year 3, the Ducks improved again.
Oregon wasn’t a flawless team, though it was perfect in the regular season. And the Ducks were actually somewhat unlucky in the turnover department. Based on passes defended and fumbles, Oregon should have come away with 24 takeaways. Instead, it had only 18 on the year. The minus-6 difference was the seventh largest in the FBS.
LSU is another team that, like Clemson, is pushing all of its chips to the center of the table in 2025.
Next fall will be defensive coordinator Blake Baker’s second in charge of the Tiger defense. He managed things in Year 1, and had to reoriente after losing Harold Perkins just 4 games into the season. Whit Weeks emerged as a star. Bradyn Swinson was a force off the edge.
Baker brought some juice. LSU had a TakeOpps rate of 7.8% in 2023 and that number jumped to 9.8% in 2024. But the Tigers produced the same number of takeaways as the year prior (14). They were unlucky to get just 14 in 2023. They were horribly unlucky to get just 14 in 2024.
LSU had just 6 interceptions — the fewest in the SEC — despite getting hands on 58 total passes. The secondary could look very different in 2025, with 5-star freshman DJ Pickett expected to play a role alongside transfers Mansoor Delane and Ja’Keem Jackson.
If Perkins returns to form and LSU figures out how to maximize his skillset, more havoc should do the Tigers well in the turnover department. At bet365, the Tigers have the fifth-best odds to win the SEC, behind Alabama and Tennessee, which makes for an interesting proposition.
At the other end of the table, BYU (plus-8.4), Oklahoma (plus-5.1), and Alabama (plus-4.2) were some of the luckiest defenses in college football. BYU’s margin tied for the largest of any team over the last 3 seasons. Louisville was also plus-8.4 in 2022. Those bounces went the other way in 2023, when the Cardinals were almost even with their expected takeaways.
BYU’s defense ranked 39th last season in opponent-adjusted EPA per play. The offense was pretty average. I thought the Cougars, who started 9-0 and finished 11-2, were a bit overrated, particularly during the unbeaten start. Timely turnovers were a huge part of their success. I’d expect BYU to take a slight step back in 2025, and that’ll be especially true if some of those turnovers dry up.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
