Quote:
Originally Posted by RedBar
G Tripp you have really been beating this "we were not a top five defense" drum this offseason. I am not sure I understand your analysis help me understand after watching this offense last year and so far this preseason why I should be worried about our "downgraded secondary and questionable defensive strategies" and not an offense that simply doesn't score that much, has a tendency to leave the defense in precarious positions and kill momentum. Not to mention a specialty team unit that missed a lot of field goals. Personalities aside the defense has been the only thing to really applaud the last few seasons and whether you agree with the statistics that the league uses to rank defenses (or offenses for that matter) they are what they are and we WERE a top five defense. If our offense was top 15 we would probably have been in the postseason. There was no balance. But you really have to work the numbers to blame the teams collapse last year on the play of the defense.
|
We were not a top five defense. Point blank. Pittsburgh. Baltimore. Tennessee. Philadelphia. Minnesota. Oops, no more room in the top five.
If you read all my analysis, all of them, I don't think there's a stone I've left unturned.
If you haven't read all of it: let me summarize quickly:
At no point would anyone have argued that our defense was great. Not in the first part of the season, not in the middle of the season, and not in the last part of the season. Never. If anything, it's value was in it's consistency. We could count on a solid effort from our defense week after week, and perform well against the NFL's best teams as long as the offense was up to par.
Well after week five, the offense didn't perform at a great level the rest of the season. The defense endured some cracks against the Rams and the Lions (one game we held on, the other we didn't), but it was generally up to par. But I don't think it stayed at that level. Too often during the 2-6 collapse, the pass defense was torn apart by a bad quarterback. Rookie Joe Flacco, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Shaun Hill all got their dibs in.
No one can sit there with a straight face and act like what we were seeing at the end of the year was a top defense. Teams were picking on Horton, Smoot, even Springs like we were the Lions. We have some pieces, but we never really put it altogether.