2020 Advanced Stats Season Review Part 3: Defense What kept the defense from living up to its billing in 2020? Share this story Paul Rutherford-USA TODAY Sports In the first two parts of our look back at the advanced stats from 2020, we’ve seen the big jump that GT took from the rock bottom of 2019 performance and then identified some significant areas in need of focus for the offense to take another step forward in 2021. This week, we’ll dive deeper into the defense, which failed to show the improvement that many desired and predicted this past season. Looking at some of the top line defensive numbers, we see why so many GT fans were disappointed in the defensive performance this year. Success rate allowed went up from 43% to 45%, yards per play allowed dipped slightly from 5.8 to 5.5, and EPA/play allowed rose from 0.08 to 0.11. The offenses faced in 2020 were roughly equivalent to those of 2019, so the top line numbers tell a story of stagnation or slight regression, which was not the expectation with the amount of experience that GT returned last year on that side of the ball. Let’s take a deeper dive to see just what happened on defense this past year.