Quote:
Originally Posted by RedBar
No Gtripp sounds like your problem is more with this defense (or I suspect this coach). Thanks for the summary you are right I have not read All of your post on this subject didn't know it was a prerequisite to stating my opinion. I never said we were an elite defense. Oops I said we were a top five defense. As in:
1.) Pittsburgh 2.) Baltimore 3.) Philadelphia 4.) WASHINGTON 5.) New York Giants. (you can google that)
I never said we had elite talent, or that guys didn't get beaten, picked on or hurt last year. I never said we got a lot of sacks or any other stat you find important. I said when looking at this football team over the past few years you really had to play with the numbers to blame this defense for the teams woes (or you have to have an axe to grind.)
As far as the "bottom line" statistic when talking about defense there is only one that matters: points allowed. Point Blank Period. If your defense finishes third in that category and you finish 8 and 8 and miss the playoffs. don't start lecturing us about sacks or quarterback pressures or takeaways. Defense is Defense it is not Offense. It is great when Defense can help put points on the board but their primary job is keeping points off the board. This defense finished third in that category last year.
Find a new subject.
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It's difficult to take you too seriously if we're ahead of double digit win teams like Tennessee and Minnesota on defense, despite all the offensive issues that those teams had as well (aside from the fact that one of those teams was a better offense than us, the advantage was on defense).
I think a lot of people agree with you, but I do not and will not because this argument simply doesn't hold very much water with me. I completely understand where you are coming from, re: points are points, but that simply doesn't tell yo enough to draw a realistic conclusion from on the strength of the defense.
You may think it's the only thing that matters, but then we're just not looking at the same things. I don't really even looked at points scored when determining defensive quality. That's how irrelevant it is to me.
So to say that your "use all" way of determining the good from the bad doesn't matter to me would be an understatement. I could care less how many points we give up this year if we make a measurable improvement over last year.
We could conceivably finish 9th or 10th in points allowed and make a big defensive jump--but you might have to be able to look past PA to see that. You know there's little that gets under my skin more than "I disagree because I'm too lazy to think past this point", but understanding that my opinion is in the minority and that it writes a pretty good narrative to just blame the offense for everything, I'll not carry out the point too long.
The bottom line though, is that the defense has plenty of room for improvement. We're definately improved in the front seven, so it's on the secondary if we get a better effort this year.