Colorado Defense's Big 12 Ranking That Defies the Buffaloes' Win-Loss Record – Sports Illustrated

Colorado Defense’s Big 12 Ranking That Defies the Buffaloes’ Win-Loss Record  Sports Illustrated

Colorado is still searching for wins, but its defensive production has put the Buffaloes near the top of a major national ranking Losing teams are not supposed to dominate the line of scrimmage, yet Colorado’s defense keeps doing it on a weekly basis. The Colorado Buffaloes lead the Big 12 with 53 tackles for loss after a run of six games and rank No. 4 nationally averaging 8.8 tackles for loss per game. Read that next to a 2-4 record, and the gap between the defense and everything else becomes hard to ignore. Colorado’s front is winning snaps at a rate few teams in the country can match, almost nine negative plays per game, and the wins on the scoreboard have not followed.

Colorado defensive lineman Santana Hopper has been the face of the recognition. Against Texas Tech, he became the first player in program history with at least five tackles for loss and five quarterback hurries in the same game, per Colorado Athletics, and he entered the Utah game with 9.5 tackles for loss on the year. Hopper explained after the Texas Tech game why the production keeps spreading. “It’s like a chain reaction,” Hopper said. “You see one person doing something good, you want to do something good, so it makes me feel good to go out there