Once again, the Eastern football team’s defense came up big in an Ohio Valley Conference win, this time in the 35-28 win against Murray State.

The Panthers’ defense tallied 21 points on the day, totaling five touchdowns in the two games.

Eastern has had 11 takeaways in the last two weeks and now have 28 on the season, and the Panthers lead the nation in turnover margin (+2.14).

If you look at Eastern’s overall stats, they don’t look all that impressive.

The 390 yards allowed per game is second-to-last in the OVC. The Panthers’ 24.7 points allowed per game is third in the conference.

The only major defensive category (besides turnovers) that they lead in is rushing yards (120 yards per game).

Yet this unit has been the foundation of Eastern’s OVC run this season.

But the stats tell a story – the story of a defense that makes its opponents play one-dimensionally, and then wait to capitalize on mistakes.

Basically, the 270 passing yards per game are the product of leaving the opposition with only one option -pass the ball.

And as my old high school football coach used to tell us when he would explain why we ran the ball 60 times a game: three things can happen when you pass (completion, incompletion or interception) and two of them are bad.

Well, more often than not, Eastern has forced the opposition into one of the two bad things. Eastern is leading the conference with 14 interceptions, have 35 pass breakups and are holding opposing quarterbacks to a 55 percent completion rate.

And in the end there isn’t one player on the defense who can take all the credit. It has come from each defensive corp.

Whether it’s the defensive line with its five sacks, 13 quarterback hurries and two forced fumbles, the linebacker’s four interceptions, 18 tackles for a loss and 183 tackles, or the defensive back’s 10 interceptions and five defensive touchdowns.

But there are still individuals putting up lofty numbers, but they probably won’t get the attention they deserve.

Just one example is junior strong safety Tristan Burge. Burge has 55 tackles, 3 interceptions, 3 fumble recoveries, 3 pass break ups and 3 defensive touchdowns.

In comparison, the top two safeties on the Buck Buchanan award watch are James Madison’s Tony LeZotte and UMass’ Shannon James. LeZotte has 66 tackles, 1 fumble recovery, and 2 forced fumbles. James has 31 tackles, 3 interceptions and 1 fumble recovery.

So needless to say Eastern’s defense is flying under the radar this year, where they probably like to be since no one on the squad really takes credit for their success this year. Hopefully, they can stay there and ride that all they way into the playoffs.

Dan Renick is a senior journalism major. If you think he’s flying under the radar in the race to get Jessica Simpson on the rebound tell him so at [email protected]