Arrow-right Camera

Color Scheme

Subscribe now

Washington State defense eyeing turnovers this season – 24 to be exact

Defensive back Skyler Thomas (28) is congratulated by lineback Nate DeRider, left, and the rest of the defense after Thomas made a interception during drills during practice. Defensive coordinator Alex Grinch believes the Cougars can win nine games this season if they can force 24 turnovers. (Jesse Tinsley / The Spokesman-Review)

PULLMAN – Alex Grinch will ultimately leave Martin Stadium a happy man on Saturday evening if his defense concedes fewer points than the opponent. Oh, and there’s another thing. He wants two turnovers. That would really make the Washington State defensive coordinator beam.

If the trend continues – the Cougars thieving their foes twice per game on average – Grinch can all but guarantee WSU will rumble into the postseason with nine wins or more.

“No other stat taken into consideration, if you have 24 or more takeaways, average win total is nine,” the third-year defensive coordinator said confidently on Sunday evening, just six days shy of WSU’s season opener against Montana State. “It’s a great predictor for success.”

College football coaches don’t obsess over sabermetrics quite the way big league baseball managers do, but the high-end analytics and complex formulas that have taken hold of Major League Baseball might also have a place on the gridiron.

Mind you, this isn’t a movement and football coaches do have to pick their spots when deciding which metrics to use and which ones to ignore. The sample size isn’t comparable to that of MLB teams, which log 162 games over a six-month span. A 12-game college football season obviously won’t spit out the same volume of numbers, so the trends are much harder to notice.

“We’re very selective in which ones we use,” Grinch said. “… Why baseball works so well with the numbers game is there’s so much continuity over a wide data study.”

And some football metrics aren’t as telling as others, or not at all in a lot of cases. Scoring defense, for example, takes into account every touchdown a team concedes, rather than only the ones allowed by the defense. Therefore, Grinch’s defense can receive a poor mark if the punt team has an especially bad day.

“Then what seems like it should be a very simple stat in fact is not, for whatever reason in our sport,” Grinch said.

But Grinch and the Cougars are pretty much married to the turnover formula. It doesn’t matter how you get the takeaways – of course, a good mix of interceptions and fumble recoveries indicates a balanced team – as long as you hit the magic number.

There’s a proven success rate, too.

Take a look at WSU since Grinch jumped on board. In 2015, the Cougars picked off 13 passes and recovered 11 fumbles. With 24 turnovers, they barely hit the target and, voila, they won nine games. And last season? The Cougars came up a hair short: 12 interceptions and 11 fumbles recovered for 23 takeaways and … eight wins.

“I can assure you if we’d had one more takeaway, we’d have won the ninth,” Grinch said. “So it works. That’s the baseline, that’s what we’ve got to get done because it wins football games.”

Grinch said programs scattered across the nation have adopted the formula. It was mightily successful in the Pac-12 Conference last year. Washington registered 33 takeaways and 12 wins, Utah recorded 31 turnovers and nine wins while Colorado thieved the opponent 26 times and won 10 games.

Grinch wasn’t using the equation before he got to WSU, but without peeking at the numbers, he’s sure it held up each of his three seasons as Missouri’s safeties coach.

“If you went back, it absolutely did,” he said.

So, let’s go back. In 2012, the Tigers missed the target by two turnovers. They won five games. The next year, Mizzou made it easily, robbing opponents 32 times en route to 12 wins. In Grinch’s final season, the Tigers got there again. Twenty-five turnovers, 11 wins.

In WSU’s case, those turnovers and extra possessions can be especially valuable. It’s not lost on anyone how dynamic the Cougar offense is and in a given ballgame, two turnovers could equate to a 28-point swing.

“When you have an offense like ours that has the ability to do something with it, once you get that takeaway, that’s the end-all, be-all,” Grinch said. “To put our offense in the position to score.”