One more of the Defensive statistics the Alabama Crimson Tide tops the nation in is First Down Defense. Eight weeks into the 2011 season opposing teams are averaging just less than 10 first downs a game against Alabama. The Tide's 79 total first downs allowed is the fewest in all college football, even though Alabama is the only team in the top ten for that category that has played eight games.
Recently, we completed adding first down numbers to our public spreadsheet of Alabama's Historic Defensive totals. So, in order to get a sense of where the 2011 team's performance fits in the past two decades of Crimson Tide squads we've built a graphic showing where all of these teams were at in terms of First Downs Allowed after eight games.
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