Time to go Dien Bien Phu ~ Bring On The Hate!!

[Off The Grid]

As always, the reasonable and rational fans ~ both'f ya!! Yowza, yowza!! ~ will either agree or disagree with the following premise, but will respect it, while either the Chicken Littles or the Pink Hats will love it, just as strongly as the other hates it ~ in this instance, it's the Pink Hats who'll hate it!! ~ but what's a feeding frenzy among friends?? Here goes:

01 ~ Everybody with half a brain or more ~ Chicken Littles, Pink Hats, or the Rational ~ knows that the Imperial Patriots are famous for their Bend But Don't Break Defenses: The Defenses that rank relatively poorly in the statistic ~ Yards Allowed ~ that only the helplessly stupid consider the most important defensive statistic, while excelling at Points Allowed.

02 ~ And everybody with a brain cell knows that Points Allowed dwarfs all other metrics.

03 ~ However...That simple Truth does not mean that Yardage is inconsequential as a means of measuring a Defense's strength. In EarthSpeak: Defenses that Bend But Don't Break against mediocre regular season competition can get fatally exposed in the PlayOffs.

04 ~ Our 2001 Defense finished 24th in Yardage. But one could argue that that was a team in transition, and one, furthermore, that had the enormous advantage of installing a Defense that caught the rest of the FootBall World by surprise, on the grandest scale: Our Defense was so unusual that it required an entire offseason in order to effectively counteract it. This is an extremely unusual dynamic, but not an unprecedented one: The 1985 Bears Defense and, ironically, the 1999 Rams Offense were so disruptive as to take the World by storm.

05 ~ That Year aside: Check out the yearly disparities between our Defense's Rank in Points...and in Yardage. Almost every Year, it's precisely what you might expect: We do much better in the category that counts most ~ Points ~ than in Yardage. But in the 4 Years since 2001 that've led to our Championships, we've never finished lower than 13th in Yardage.

06 ~ We're currently 29th.

07 ~ For that reason, and because it gels with what my gut's been telling me since we gutted the Front 6, I believe that we're facing longer odds than most foresee.

I'll crawl into my shelter, now.

 

[Off The Grid]

Interesting SideNote: Since Week 6, at which point we were yielding about 440 Yards per Game, we've been yielding only about 330 Yards per Game, which'd catapult us from #29 all the way to #16, a vastly more impressive showing.

 

[Adam Seward]

You know it would be much easier for all of us if you’d just open up and tell us how you really felt

 

[Joker]

You know it would be much easier for all of us if you’d just open up and tell us how you really felt

OK....should I go to college?...or should I join the service? think about my future makes me nervous....should I turn on my radio? ...or watch my television...believe me it's a very tough decision...it's a complex world....sometimes I feel like a ch-ch-ch-....chimpanzee...it's so hard for a casual guy like ME

 

[Galeb]

You know it would be much easier for all of us if you’d just open up and tell us how you really felt

Most of us wouldn't survive such an experience.

 

[Galeb]

OK....should I go to college?...or should I join the service? think about my future makes me nervous....should I turn on my radio? ...or watch my television...believe me it's a very tough decision...it's a complex world....sometimes I feel like a ch-ch-ch-....chimpanzee...it's so hard for a casual guy like ME

 

[letekro]

Of course You are right

 

[jah]

To me, this team feels more championship-viable than 2010-2012 but less than 2014-16. I think your second post about the early/late season splits is important though. The early version of this team felt like watching 2012 all over again; it's certainly different now.

The defense was, in fact, holding this team back from being Super Bowl caliber at some point this year. It remains to be seen whether the improvement has been quick and effective enough.

 

[RelocatedPatFan]

I wonder how well the bend but don't break offense would work if ?Brady wasn't so freaking efficient with scoring/drives? Part fo the reason we can chew clock down (on defense of all places) is due to the fact that Brady can be expected to do more than his fair share of the work?

 

[jri37]

This reeks of some secret government psychological experiment. The last one I got suckered into didn't go well for me.

 

[luuked]

I dont think that there is anything wrong with a discussion on any statistic as long as it is done a reasonable and nuanced level.

The issue from my POV is that many people form their opinion first, then look for stats that confirm that opinion and then go around and try to make it sound like they did research and because there are some numbers whatever they think is a fact.

Lets take a look at yards allowed. There are at least 6 teams (Denver, Jacksonville, Arizona, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland) in the top 12 of yards allowed that might have an arguably strong defense (by that metric) but a laughable offense where you have to ask yourself if those teams wouldn't have been better served to spend some of the money that is used on defense on the other side of the ball.

Which brings me to one of my core believes. You have to see all of roster building through the prism of salary cap and scheme. Yes, we are giving up more yards than others and investing into a faster and more talented front seven would decrease that. But would that really increase our chances of winning football games ?

The difference between #13 in yards allowed per game and us at #29 is essentially 50 yards per game. How much money is that worth ?

 

[Ring 6]

To me, this team feels more championship-viable than 2010-2012 but less than 2014-16. I think your second post about the early/late season splits is important though. The early version of this team felt like watching 2012 all over again; it's certainly different now.

The defense was, in fact, holding this team back from being Super Bowl caliber at some point this year. It remains to be seen whether the improvement has been quick and effective enough.

The improvement has now last 11 weeks

 

[jah]

The improvement has now last 11 weeks

But is it enough? In the regular season, we know the answer is yes. As OTG alluded to, things might be different in the postseason. I'm thinking about 2010, mostly. I know that team thrived off of turnovers in a way this team doesn't, but it still feels like the closest comparison. Terrible YPG, great PPG, great offense, demolished the regular season (in impressive fashion against good teams often on the road). There was nothing to suggest how it would end, but in retrospect, maybe the defensive yards-points allowed disparity is a place to look.

 

[luuked]

But is it enough? In the regular season, we know the answer is yes. As OTG alluded to, things might be different in the postseason. I'm thinking about 2010, mostly. I know that team thrived off of turnovers in a way this team doesn't, but it still feels like the closest comparison. Terrible YPG, great PPG, great offense, demolished the regular season (in impressive fashion against good teams often on the road). There was nothing to suggest how it would end, but in retrospect, maybe the defensive yards-points allowed disparity is a place to look.

How had the defensive yards vs. points allowed anything to say about how 2010 ended ? If Crumpler doesnt drop that ball in the first quarter and we go up by 7 instead of 3 who knows how the game goes ? Or the fake punt ?

I get that people like to somehow build narratives out of random things that go wrong and try to rationalize unexpected results by trying to find things that might have been early indicators of hidden problems but the loss to the Jets was not one of those.

Almost everything that could go wrong went wrong that day and then the season was over.

 

[aluminum seats]

Interesting SideNote: Since Week 6, at which point we were yielding about 440 Yards per Game, we've been yielding only about 330 Yards per Game, which'd catapult us from #29 all the way to #16, a vastly more impressive showing.

I think this is significant, not to mention (and yes, it's weird this appears to be important) Van Noy has been out.

 

[Off The Grid]

How had the defensive yards vs. points allowed anything to say about how 2010 ended ? If Crumpler doesnt drop that ball in the first quarter and we go up by 7 instead of 3 who knows how the game goes ? Or the fake punt ?

I get that people like to somehow build narratives out of random things that go wrong and try to rationalize unexpected results by trying to find things that might have been early indicators of hidden problems but the loss to the Jets was not one of those.

Almost everything that could go wrong went wrong that day and then the season was over.

That's very fair, and I'll be the first to declare the 2010 Team felt like the Alpha Team of the League...In fact, I very recently compared our Divisional Loss to the Jets, inexplicable as it was, to the Miners losing to the Vikings in 1987.

Sometimes the best Team doesn't win it all.

But just because one Loss can be written off as an horrific confluence of bad breaks doesn't mean that we wouldn't've gotten exposed later on.

 

[supafly]

I think 2011 was a comparable season in terms of yards allowed and the ranking of such, and we came damn close to winning the whole thing.

Are the odds as good as the past few years? Probably not, but that still likely gives us a 50/50 shot of at least returning to the SB. In my opinion, they need to step things up a bit on both sides of the ball if they’re going to have a legitimate shot at winning the whole thing. Hopefully, the week of rest (and possible second week of rest) would help improve on some of these issues.

 

[BTTA]

Well done, @Off The Grid .

Your post raises a handful of follow-up questions which I have neither the resources nor time to research. Here are a couple:

-Is it a routine matter for the Pats' defense to get better over the course of the season? Does history show a pattern here? And thus, render the "yards allowed" stats to be essentially meaningless by playoff time?

-Does the tendency towards high "yards allowed" lead to worse field position, thus setting up the essential nature of Brady and the steady offense, as mentioned by @RelocatedPatFan above? Without Brady and the offense, how many "points allowed" would the short field issue cause?

 

[Ring 6]

I dont think that there is anything wrong with a discussion on any statistic as long as it is done a reasonable and nuanced level.

The issue from my POV is that many people form their opinion first, then look for stats that confirm that opinion and then go around and try to make it sound like they did research and because there are some numbers whatever they think is a fact.

Lets take a look at yards allowed. There are at least 6 teams (Denver, Jacksonville, Arizona, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland) in the top 12 of yards allowed that might have an arguably strong defense (by that metric) but a laughable offense where you have to ask yourself if those teams wouldn't have been better served to spend some of the money that is used on defense on the other side of the ball.

Which brings me to one of my core believes. You have to see all of roster building through the prism of salary cap and scheme. Yes, we are giving up more yards than others and investing into a faster and more talented front seven would decrease that. But would that really increase our chances of winning football games ?

The difference between #13 in yards allowed per game and us at #29 is essentially 50 yards per game. How much money is that worth ?

Not all yards are created equal. Just piling a bunch of stats from different games and situations and trying to compare them to judge the quality of a defense is specious at best.

For example:
The patriots allow 374 yards per game and 35.3 yards per drive.
The Steelers who have allowed basically the same number of points (6 less) allow 302 per game and 27.3 per drive.

If the difference was a 72 yard drive and a TD vs 8 more yards on every drive that’s a major difference. But when you are adding up 1000 plays and 150 drives all vs different teams and in different circumstances and average them out it really tells very little.

The patriots were awful on d the first 4 weeks and as good anyone since.
In 11 games only 2 times have they allowed more than 17. In 11 weeks they have allowed only 17 offensive touchdowns. Regardless of anything else 17 TDs in 11 weeks is excellent defense.

 

[patsfaninpa]

Feels more Iike 11-13 defenses to me. Our secondary hasn't played as well as I thought they would. I stil think some team will just run the ball down our throats.

That said. I'm hoping Branch, Van Noy and Harrison help us. I still have confidence(maybe unjustified) our secondary will step up.