The Big 12’s defensive struggles extend to the NFL draft

Before any talk about divisions, realignment, or anything else to improve the perception of the league, let’s start small. Perhaps the Big 12 should consider simply getting better football players.

It should pay acute attention to doing so on the defensive side of the ball, given the fact that the Big 12 lags pretty severely behind the other Power 5 leagues in terms of drafted defenders over the last five years. As they say: Defense wins championships.

The numbers here settle the way they do because of realignment. If you signed at Texas A&M in 2011 (like Johnny Manziel did, for instance), you signed with a Big 12 team. But because of how the chips fell, you ended up finishing your career in the SEC and contributing to that conference’s numbers.

These days, the wide-open offenses and video game numbers have become the league’s calling card.

But at some point, someone in the conference has to be able to stop a nosebleed if they want more than just Oklahoma to compete for national titles. They’ll also need it to simply impress on the non-conference slate. It’s not a grand conspiracy keeping the league out of the Playoff. Big 12 teams have only been in one of the three because they don’t win enough.

This also bolsters the AAC’s claim that the Power 5 should really be a Power 6. Texas had seven defensive draft picks in the 2013-2017 span; UConn had nine.

The fact that the Big 12’s defenses as a whole were worse than the AAC in the S&P+ conference rankings is further proof. The numbers take into account opponent and pace.

Also for all the conference’s offensive prowess, it hasn’t exactly translated to putting players into the league on that side of the ball at a higher rate. In the same timespan they’ve only put 56 players in the draft total.

The recruiting cycle has a what-have-you-done-lately nature to it, and that cycle moves quickly. Our timeframe spans back to 2013 when today’s recruits were about 12 years old. That’s right around the age we all started really paying attention to many things, including sports beyond our immediate geographic area.

It’s already been over a decade since the league won a championship. Texas and Oklahoma will always be varying degrees of fine in recruiting. But if the trend continues, and the league keeps getting shut out of Playoff and lagging behind putting talent into the NFL, it certainly won’t help the schools in the conference’s middle of the pack on the recruiting trail. The Big 12 had an ugly Signing Day this year.

Both the talent gap and the draft dearth can be explained away with one word: youth.

This was a young conference — another reason for the draft issues — and S&P+ expects seven of 10 teams to perform better this fall. Two others (WVU and Kansas) have enough transfers to lead you to believe they might avoid regression as well.

Texas was one of the youngest teams in the country, and TCU wasn’t far behind. They’re both projected to surge. Oklahoma State might have the best passing game in the country. Kansas State could have one of the nation’s best running games.

We’ll see if getting longer in the tooth is all that’s needed to turn things around for the league. Looking forward to 2017, it’s time for the Big 12 to get things together or they’ll risk being a power conference in name only.