I would say "I can't think of an example of a championship caliber defense in the FCS that allowed over 300 yards passing and a lot of point scored on it"
but then there's this
http://www.espn.com/college-football/ma ... =400869736It's a basic impulse to say our defense is trash whenever the other team passes for a first down or a big play. It's not realistic to expect any team to win every play, to not allow points, big plays on occasion, and so on. What you can do, is average or aggregate overall performances and attribute a sort of probability as to what to expect.
If you look at how we played as playoff teams in 2011 and 2012
(links:
http://woffordterriers.com/cumestats.as ... &year=2011 http://athletics.wofford.edu/cumestats. ... r=2012%20& )
Elon always and occasionally Western Carolina passed for over 300 yards against us. We beat them regularly and our overall pass defense was solid for those years (the strength of the team in 2012). 315 yards to an air raid offense isn't stupendous but it's also not terrible either. It obviously remains to be seen how good Samford is but there's an indication that they are decent. The 300 yards passing as an indicator for us having a bad defense is kind of like saying in basketball, because we let a team like VMI score 80 our defense isn't good (even when they average well over 100)
Meanwhile, if you look at the stats of us in 2015, we allowed 4 teams to throw for 300 yards on us, with another 2 at 249 or more
If you look at 2014, we allowed 3 teams to throw over 300 yards on us and another 3 thew for 249 or more
Or you can compare it to the 2013 where we had 3 teams throw for 300 yards and another 3 threw for 249 or more.
My point is, so far we've allowed one 300 yard game, 2 games of less than 100 yards, and another 2 games in the low 200s. The season is almost halfway over and WCU and VMI are the only remaining teams that will throw it a lot relative to passing (even then, WCU might not) and I can say with confidence that Samford is better than both of them.
And I don't say all of this to throw stats out or to be pretentious, but I say this because quite frankly I don't like the impulsive boo-hiss "woe-is-me" attitude that comes from this board in the wake of a bad week. Our players work their butts off and the coaches are underpaid but still put out a great, competitive product. We've had a couple rough years, that's true, and there are reasons why that is. The least we can do, is give credit where credit is due, and I sincerely believe we're a better football team this year.
And I could be wrong about all of this (!), WCU may throw it around the yard and we look foolish and lose Saturday. But even if we let them complete some passes and get some yardage that doesn't mean we're a bad defensive or bad pass defensive football team. It just means they like to pass and they'll get their yards. How many times have we played an absolutely terrible offensive football game and still run for 250-300 yards? The same principle applies with passing football teams.
Criticism is good, but when it's statistically an anomaly (like, if we threw for 300 yards in a game) or anticipated (option teams will get run yardage, air raids will get pass yardage), there's really no purpose in it. It's not like the coaches read this board anyway. We might as well just be supportive, give credit where it's due, and if we're going to be angry in our criticism, have facts to back it up.