I think this board is giving too much credit to our defense. Here is where we stand after 1/3 of the season: Points/Game= 26 (25th in league) Pass Yds/Game = 258 (29th in league) Rush Yds/Game = 69 (3rd in league) Def is still our achilles heel. Lets recap the games so far - Week 1 - Chad nearly beats us on the last play of the game, we got out of Miami with a lucky win and our def crumbled in the second half against a guy who everyone on this board said was incapable of leading a come from behind charge when down by 10+ pts. If you are honest we escaped luckily in the opener. Week 2 - Backup Matt Cassel looked like Tom Brady against us and the NE rb's had their way with us in our home opener no less. NE has not been able to do that type of dominate offensive performance against any other team this year. Very bad game for the defense overall. Week 3 - SD literally crushed our def in all facets of the game. Rivers, Tomlinson put up huge numbers on us. It was much worse when Jenkins went down halfway through this game but still, this was an embarrassing performance in front of the entire country. One bright spot was the int for a td but that was easily forgotten by the horrendous play for the rest of the game. Week 4 - Kurt Warner nearly threw for 1,000 yds it seemed this game. This was like a Madden video game defense. AZ could reel off 70 yds in 5 plays at will. So what if we were up, our def folded like a lawn chair drive after drive and AZ nearly caught us in the end. Luckily Favre and Coles saved us but this was perhaps the most embarrassing defensive game of the year. Week 6 - Cincinnati was playing with an Ivy league QB who had started all of 2 games in his career so really this game is an anomaly and should not be counted. The bengals team that played dallas tough with Carson Palmer playing was not the same team we played, we got the bengal light version. All in all, our offense is clicking big time, but for all the money we spent on defense and talk about how our sacks are up year to year, I'm not buying it. When the playoffs are on the table and the game is close I dont have confidence from what I've seen that our def can stop anybody.
I think our run defense statistically looks better than it is, and our pass D statistically looks worse than it really is. The stats are skewed because of the leads we had in the last few games. Our defense is decent but has a lot of room for improvement and tightening up.
I thought about disagreeing with this darksider on a point by point basis but instead I'll just go with Jerry Garcia: He's dead, we're grateful. BAM!!!
This is my favorite and describes the personalities in this place to a T: (Thanks for Quitting Mr. Larson! )
Exactly............ All in all they have quite the potential though to be both something special and frustrate the freaking hell out of you.
i dont think we over rating the defense here. we all know that the secondary is better than they look on paper. the passing stats are skewed by the arizona game. as are the run stats as they hardly ran at all in the game. the run defense is very good though. the points per game are going to be skewed by the chargers and arizona games. by the end of the season when these stats have more time to even out the defense as a whole will be in the top 12 or so defenses if they continue to play at this level without injury.
11th overall is overrated? Sutton doesn't play pussy defense and turns the ball over back to the offense during garbage time, the D is rated in the top 6 because passing yrds would be ranked somewhere in the low teens instead of 26th.. They are right where the should be.
Haha, dude, shut up. Use your sarcasm correctly, or else when I see you threatening to jump off a building I'll whisper behind my hand how awful it was that everyone in the street was rooting for you to jump. And only a retard would quote Voltaire.
I don't think the defense was trying that hard in the second half of the Arizona game. It was a huge lead and everyone knew Favre would just throw more touchdowns if it got close. Honestly, it looked the defense was taking it easy and Arizona was just playing for pride. That game is what makes our stats look so bad, that and SD played us like it was a playoff game and we didn't match their intensity.
Yes very overrated. But they have potential to be a lot better. That's hypothetical though and the facts are that so far they haven't played as well as most of us think. Btw, PPG is the one that really matters and we're 25th in that category.
Week 1: Our K's kept giving Miami FP near midfield and the D kept holding Miami while our O stopped scoring points. We won BECAUSE of the D. Week 2: The reason the game was close was b./c of the D. Avg starting FG: NE 37, NYJ 21. That is a HUGE difference and NE's only TD was scored after an INT set them up deep in our territory. Week 3: Didn't play well BUT we lost b/c of the offense and STs turning the ball over. It's hard keeping teams from scoring when they are constantly starting in your side of the field. Week 4: Shut out an amazing O for a half, the game was over at the half and they relaxed and played poorly in the 2nd hgalf but when the game was still being decided they shut them out. Week 6(week 5 bye): Despite the O trying to give Cincy the game w/ all the TOs and the free TD the D held Cincy to ONE scoring drive which should have eben a FG if they checked the replay on that 3rd down conversion. The perception on this board and around the league is that our O has been carrying us but in fact it is the opposite.
