If you ignore the first three quarters, you can put the blame clearly on the defense. But watching the first three quarters, it is clearly more on the offense and special teams. The offense didn't score until 5:29 minutes left in the third quarter. The offense's screw up was the reason why the Giants score a TD before that.
Of course, you realize you fall right into doing the exact same thing as the people are you are chastising this thread - forcing all the blame onto one unit.
Clearly, both are to blame.
The reason people are blaming the defense in most cases - SB42, for instance, or yesterday - is because if you give your team a lead with 1:30 or 2:15 left in a game, your win probability is extremely high. In fact, it was over 80 percent when the Patriots took the lead.
The bottom line is games play out in different ways, you could harp on the offense's terrible first three quarters, sure. But when you are in a position where the average team wins 80% of the time and you don't - that's going to garner more attention than anything else.
The reality is - I think yesterday is an example where the defense played great all game and then was, in fact, sidetracked by injuries and a couple dumb plays. I don't think this was like SB42 or other defensive meltdowns - I actually have faith that if presented with the opportunity again, and if Chung and Spikes were healthy - we win that game.
But Rob, you're no better than the ones blaming it all on the defense. Look, the Giants are paid too, and their Defense played well, just like in SB42, they controlled our offense and the line - the offense did struggle through 3 quarters, but when it mattered most, the Patriots offense twice captured the lead. That doesn't just count for a little bit, it counts for a lot.
The "should they have been in this situation" game is almost irrelevant to me - I look at things as how they played out. The offense sucked for 3 quarters, but there is no way to say they would've been up 14 points if they scored more - the Giants might have countered with better offense, certain turnovers may not have happened - the entire game would've been different. The what if game puts you in some quantum physics land that I'm not comfortable talking about. As soon as you change one thing about that game and say "what if this..." you change everything, from the resulting defensive performance, to the refs, to whatever.
I'll talk about how it did play out.
The offense sucked for a while. The defense was great for a while. The offense was mega-clutch again. The defense - though arguably through little fault of their own, or their own starters, at least - sucked and was very anti-clutch again.
There is no way to look at yesterday's game and not see both units to blame and come to the conclusion above.
I take a lot of positives out of yesterday's game. For the fourth time this year, the offense showed great resolve in the fourth quarter - granted, they have lost 3 of those games. And for the third time in four games, the defense played great for the vast majority of the game - only to be derailed by things out of their control.
If the two units can put it together for 60 minutes, we'll be fine. I went into this weekend thinking we were hopeless because of our defense, but left it feeling much better about that side of the ball.