Digging Deeper into UW's Defensive Effort Against Arizona; the Numbers Don't Lie

Husky Maven's Mike Martin takes a numerical look into the Huskies' defensive performance last weekend.

Coming off of a resounding 44-27 victory over the Arizona Wildcats, Jimmy Lake's defense appears to be one of the better stop units in the Pac-12 Conference despite All-American candidates Levi Onwuzurike and Joe Tryon opting out for the season.

Factoring in the fourth quarter, Sharp College Football computed and rated the Washington defense as the fifth best in the nation so far this season.

Week 13 Pac-12 Beta_Rank Defense

5 Washington
6 Oregon
26 Arizona State
41 Utah
47 California
50 USC
64 Stanford
66 Colorado
71 UCLA
82 Washington State
85 Oregon State
86 Arizonahttps://t.co/MhNzGs8gql

— Sharp College Football (@Sharp_CFB) November 23, 2020

Arizona scored 30 points and piled up 444 yards the week prior against USC. The Wildcats took the lead with 1:35 left, only to have the Trojans go 75 yards to win the game.

The Wildcats demonstrated offensive firepower to keep up with USC on the scoreboard. They had a balanced attack with Gary Brightwell rushing for 121 yards and Tayvain Cunningham supplying 110 receiving yards.

No such luck against Washington.

Sure, through three quarters the Wildcats mustered a grand total of 66 yards of total offense.  

The Huskies defense picked up right where it left off against Oregon State in the second half the week prior. The UW held the Wildcats to zero points in the first three quarters.  

Arizona was 0-9 on third down and averaged 0.89 yards per rushing attempt and quarterback Grant Gunnell had 50 yards passing on 18 passing attempts.

Once the subs entered the game en masse  in the fourth quarter, Arizona padded its offensive numbers though it had no hope of winning, scoring four touchdowns.

The game was essentially over in the second quarter, when Edefuan Ulofoshio stripped Gunnell of the ball, the win-probability went up over the 90-percent threshold.

The win-probability remained over  90 percent for the rest of the game, not even dipping below 99.9-percent as Arizona scored 27 points in the final period.

The Wildcats' average starting position was the 20-yard line and Arizona didn't enter Washington territory until the fourth quarter.

The eight Wildcat drives before the start of the fourth quarter combined brought 33 plays, or just four plays each series.  That means that with five sacks on the Wildcats 23 passing plays (and sacks count as rushing plays) the Huskies were able to get to Gunnell 21 percent of the time.

It's difficult to remember a Husky game where the defense dominated in such a resounding fashion in the past decade.