I go by what my eyes seen, not some stat sheet.
The pats defense sucked last year, however they were opportunistic when they turned the ball over. That was the only thing that kept the opponents scoring down. We had a great offense that was not on the field more due to the inability of our D to get 3 and outs. We were the 4th worse in red-zone D
so it was not just a result of bend don't break.
If our defense didn't suck so bad we would not have used all our 5 top 100 draft selections to sign defensive players.
Our D sucked, because of some injuries mainly Chung and Dowling, McCourty regressing, and BB dumping Meriweather, Sanders and Butler in favor of Molden, Sergio Brown and Barrett.
This year if McCourty can return to form, Chung and Dowling stay on the
field will go a long way to rectify the problem. If Dennard shows something in the slot, Moore continues to improve with experience along with the addition of a real NFL safety in Gregory, I see the Pats making great strides