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It's a forced turnover. There's nothing wrong with that but it's the whole point. With the exception of one drive, the Bills either scored, got turned over, or stopped themselves with penalties. Even the one "clean" drive had a Bills penalty in it. I just didn't count it because it wasn't the type that takes a 3rd and 1 and makes it a 3rd and 11 (it took a 3rd and 16 and made it a 3rd and 19).
The Patriots have trouble making clean stops. If they don't turn an opponent over, they're in big trouble.
I'm having a hard time remembering the details of a lot of the drives, so you might be counting this one as the "clean" stop, but the first drive which was set back by a holding penalty should count as a clean stop to me. The reason there was holding on that play was because Jones beat his man. I think credit needs to be given to the defense in those situations as well.
False starts, formation mistakes, holding when it wasn't necessary, personal fouls, that kind of thing are the Bills shooting themselves in the foot. A holding on Jones means the defense did it's job. Overall your point is still sound though, this is just arguing semantics really.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. "OVER Loading at ANY position can create a Fatal Advantage. THAT is what interests ME. Attacking With Concentrated Force. THAT is what WINS. In the words ~ more or less ~ of General Patton: 'I'm fighting a WAR, here. Let the B*****ES worry about their FLANKS.' " - Off the Grid
"The key to any successful organization is to anticipate things, not react to them." - Michael Lombardi
If the Bills even had only half of their penalties on sunday,they would have won
If the Bills had no or less than 3 penalties all game,I think they would have won and won considerably easy
The Bills certainly were the better team sunday but they lost the game because of themselves,the Pats had no answers on defense all day.
Always good to get an ugly win than a pretty loss,but I was not proud of the way they played on sunday....only Woodhead was the bright spot on a dark day.
Opp Comp %: 66.0% (26th)
Opp Yds/Att: 8.1 (29th)
Opp Pass TD: 19 (29th)
Opp Passer Rating: 97.3 (28th)
Opp Pass Yds/G: 285 (29th)
In other words, the Pats have one of the worst four pass defenses in the NFL, pretty much by every metric available. What they do have going for them is this:
(1) They force a lot of turnovers: 10 INT (6th) and 13 FUM (the 23 takeaways is #3 in the NFL).
(2) They are actually not bad at sacking the QB: 20 (16th).
So those two things (especially the turnovers) mask their pass defense deficiencies, believe it or not. If they were even an average team in getting turnovers, the pass defense numbers would look even worse.
The proof of the pudding is the record 6-3, which says we win 2/3 of our games.
I'm sure Muhammed Ali's "Rope-a-Dope" strategy wasn't good or fun to watch, as he let his opponent punch himself out, before he went on to win. BB's strategy is the same.
With a few more pass rushers and a few more talented secondary players, so we don't have to play too many UDFAs, BB could change strategies, to have a "dominating" Defense.
I would like to make the observation that Bruschi wasn't Bruschi until he had six years of experience. Ninko wasn't this Ninko for more than 5 seasons. This Defense despite its problems has consistently been at the top or near top in turnovers, for three seasons. That is NOT luck. Indeed the lack of turnovers told BB he had to strip down the D, and send the veterans out to pasture.
A poor Coach would have waited until 2-14 loomed, but BB stepped up and started the rebuild, that is still on going.
As was pointed out by another post, the entire starting secondary doesn't possess 5 years of experience between them. On another post, Deus Irae pointed out our secondary consists of 2 UDFAs, two high draft pick CBs, one of which is on IR again, and a rookie. Our Safety crew consists of an average veteran FA, an often injured high pick, and two rookies, one of which never saw the field in college other than ST, except for Rugby. Fortunately there is speed and talent there, but it is hardly experienced nor consistent.
Yet consistently they win.
Last edited by AzPatsFan; 11-13-2012 at 11:59 AM..
The secondary sucks, sure, but they're young, talented, and inexperienced. As is the majority of our pass rushers. If you're going to be bad, it's a pretty good silver lining if there's reasonable expectation that you'll get better.
I saw it. Who cared what gut wrenching feeling you(original poster) got. The D caused the turnover and won the game. Oh and by the way if you have been paying attention the D has shown it can cause the turnover late in key moments several times this year off the top of my head another one that comes to mind is the fumble Spikes caused vs Zona that Ghost missed the kick to blow that one.
This made me think about how the Pats' D is performing with the game on the line this season. So far they're 3-2 with coming up with a play to give the Pats a chance to win/seal the game (4-2 if you want to include Denver):
FF vs Cards
fail vs Ravens
FF vs Broncos
fail vs Hawks
FF vs Jets (They also stuffed them after the kickoff fumble)
INT vs Bills
This is an improvement over last season where they were just 2-2 to finish the season and 3-3 if you include POs. This also puts them in the same realm as most defenses considered good/clutch. The only true outlier is the Texans who've come up big on defense two out of two times they had a chance.
29Likes
Re: The defense is not that bad
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