DEFENSE
As always, we’ll give some quick analysis along with the tiered rankings (Now through Game 3 of 2025) and are derived via a proprietary scoring formula, and based on the following advanced charting statistics (please note the distinctions in how tackles, etc. are counted and why these stats will almost always differ from the official university stats and cockamamie PFF):
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***Also, Please note: -1 point was added starting in 2019 for any defensive penalty outside of defensive pass interference which is always considered a coverage burn and is not double-counted. Also, please note that missed tackles that result in blown contains are counted as blown contains (-1) and are not double-counted as both a blown contain and a missed tackle.
Also, please note that exact snap-count numbers may differ from other sources at times, as the Deep Dig does not count plays as defensive player snaps that are blown dead due to penalty, punts, opponent victory formations, opponent kneel downs, opponent spiked balls, extra points or other plays where the player is not technically playing on defense***
Defensive Snap Counts By Week and Percentage of Total Defensive Snaps Played – Through Game 3
Defensive Productivity Market-Share Percentages and Snaps per Production Caused Metrics *Through Game 3* (snaps per production caused is colored coded from blue/best to white/median to red/worst; movement up or down the rankings from last week in parentheses after player’s name)
Defensive Snaps per Production Caused Versus Historical Precedent (This week including players who have played at least 90 total defensive snaps in 2025; Comparing their per-snap efficiency in causing production to players who played at least 200 snaps in previous seasons)
Quick Hits and Thoughts
We all know that the defense is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind right now when it comes to ways the team can improve, but what we can see through three weeks is that one exciting thing about the unit is that, despite being very impressive thus far, there is actually still reasonable room for improvement — especially from a per-snap efficiency standpoint.
The sample for inclusion on the historical snaps-per-production-caused chart above is obviously still small (players from previous seasons dating back to 2015 need to have had at least 200 snaps for inclusion while players from this season so far only need to have 90). The reason for doing this is just to give us an early look at where the unit stacks up against previous years and see if there is any early signal to be taken away. But we couldn’t help but notice that of the 195 total players listed on the sheet, that there are six players from the 2025 unit in the top 50 (Anthony Hill, Liona Lefau, Jelani McDonald, Ethan Burke, Trey Moore and Ty’Anthony Smith) while the 2024 unit had nine (Colin Simmons, Hill, Lefau, Alfred Collins, David Gbenda, Andrew Mukuba, Barryn Sorrell, Jahdae Barron and Ethan Burke).
On the whole, looking at the players from the 2024 team, who, over the course of an entire regular season played at least 200 snaps their snaps-per-production-caused (meaning how efficient they were on a per-snap basis, not on the whole based on total play volume), looked like this:
Whereas, in 2025, based on what we’ve seen so far, the players with roles that seem to indicate they’ll eventually reach that 200-snap threshold look like this:
So, in 2024 the average snaps-per-production-caused for the defense’s key contributors was at a rate of once per every 8.82 snaps, while thus far in 2025 it’s been once per every 10.1 snaps.
First off, we think it’s incredible that Anthony Hill has managed to be as productive as he’s been in generating points in the grading scale despite a very different utilization so far this season being in zone coverage out of the overhang and in the slot for such a high frequency of snaps. As the Texas defense gets into SEC play where his motor and playmaking ability will be needed in a role closer to what we saw from him last season, his efficiency should regress to the mean. What’s more interesting is what is happening with Colin Simmons. He has not been nearly as productive as he was last season, and certainly nowhere near as efficient. We will note that if we were to simply take the penalties off his resume, his snaps-per-production-caused would bump up from once every 12.4 snaps to once every 8.1 snaps. But still, that would be almost two times less often that he’s generating production on a per-snap basis than we saw from his ridiculous freshman season. When the production starts coming in from Simmons in games where opposing QBs have to drop back and go through their progression against Texas (Sark said at his Monday PC that the average time that the ball came out against UTEP was 1.8 seconds), the production is going to come in buckets.
And those two are the big pieces, but we’re seeing a really massive swing for players like Maraad Watson, who’s gone from generating production once every 52 snaps post-Ohio State, to once every 9.08 snaps post-SJSU to once every 8.64 snaps post-UTEP. Jelani McDonald has gone from 10.8 to 10.5 to now 7.7. Ethan Burke has gone from 10.67 to 9 to 7.91. Hero Kanu over the last two weeks has gone from cumulatively generating production once every 17.25 snaps to once every 12 snaps. While not all Texas players are trending in the right direction from an efficiency standpoint, the point is that many truly key ones are coming online right before our eyes, and the ones who are not — again — the Simmons’ and the Hills of the world, are 1) still not playing badly in general sense (especially Hill); and 2) just far too talented and special as players to not round into form sooner than later.
And what’s amazing is that we are talking about this defense in a manner that would indicate that it is somehow broken and there is so much to fix, but what your eyeballs tell you about the unit is surely right. Say what you will about the Texas offense, the Texas defense looks like one of the best in the country. What we’re telling you is that — provided that the offense can operate in a functional and complementary manner — they’re probably going to get even better as the season unfolds.
