under mangini every season it seems our d gets off to slow starts, then after the bye our d plays good. other than the sacks we've been getting and the two defensive td's, our d has looked bad. under mangini's 1st two seasons, we had our bye weeks later, this season its early. so i ask, will we continue that trend, and gets this d playing good all around? i sure hope so.
One big omission: other than the sacks, two defensive TDs AND the fact that our run defense is like 4th or something in the league thus far. A huge difference between our pre-bi week defenses in the last few years is that we're already controlling the run whereas we were getting absolutely thrashed in the run game in 06 and 07
We had the bye in week 9 in his first year. We were 4-4 after beating Buffalo, Miami, Detroit and Tennessee and losing to Jax, Indy, Cleveland and someone else. Possibly NE. Our defense then stiffened and we went 6-2 in the second half of the season.
IMO the most important stats for a defensive unit in no particular order are...... run defense on FIRST down turnovers 3rd down sacks defensive penalties that give the off a first down i knew a Div 1 college DC back in the 90's that had a binder full of NFL defensive stats for each team which included the above stats as well as many other bizarre ones. There is a wonderful correlation between these stats and overall defensive performance. if a defense can be in the top 10 in each of the above categories you have a good chance to be successful. jil
Other than the pass rush on passing plays and the run stopping on running plays, yeah, this defense has been awful... I was very happy to see the way we turned Warner over again and again. He's not the most difficult to turn over, but the fact that we did it as much as we did was simply impressive. We've also stopped the run quite well with Jenkins in the game. I really think our defense will take it to the next level by the end of the season. All the pieces are there for us to be successful, except for possibly quality depth at secondary. Hopefully Justin Miller or Hank Poteat can give us something there. Just imagine if Gholston starts to make a couple plays...
Gholston would need to put up more than 4.5 tackles, 1 sack and .25 forced fumbles per game. At this point I'm real happy with the performance of our starting LOLB. Lets let Gholston learn while we don't absolutely need him.
Great quote from Pace during today's player interviews I think he regrets losing to the patsies. He sees the need to tighten up on the three and outs.
