I like the back & forth on the role of turnovers, and the notion of "depending on turnovers."
Here's the thing that's getting lost - if you have 23 turnovers in 12 games, that's two ahem, unexpected changes of possession per game. Some are symptoms of playing from big leads, and just accepting the gifts panicking quarterbacks hand you. Some indicate a difference between being capable of coverage but not ball-hawking, and being capable of both. There is a phrase that captures the phenomenon of high turnover differential - being an "opportunistic defense."
The other night against the JEST, Mayo had a catchable (interceptable) ball come his way, and he dropped it. Now, Mayo's a tackling machine, but he doesn't have the greatest hands in the world. Let's say in that situation he makes the catch 3 times out of 10. Guyton? For some reason, he's got the hands. McCourty? May as well be a receiver.
Now let's say nobody on the Pats' defense has remotely sticky hands. Let's say that instead of 23 interceptions (if that was the number) they come up with 10. Same level of panic on the part of opponents, same pressure, everything else the same, but 13 fewer int.s.
That's the basics: winning tip drills, reading QBs, etc. Then there's the question of risk assessment.
Don't get me wrong. Nobody's taking out a slide-rule and submitting a 20-page report. However, in those non-gift INTs, you do an on-the-fly risk assessment. You aren't covering the guy anymore at a certain point; you're after the ball -- sometimes in a way that gives away a score if you eff it up.
Think. Do you do this when you don't have a decent lead? Of course not. We'd have to check out McCourty's behavior game-by-game to talk about when he jumped a route or otherwise increased the risk of getting torched by going for the ball. If you have a lead, it's a moderate risk, and you're good at jumping routes, I'm thinking it's an okay risk to take.
It's certainly opportunistic.
All that to say, there are always teams any given year with a favorable takeaway number. You're ascribing it to factors beyond the defense's control. I'm saying that QBs are forced by time remaining, down, distance, and score, to make bad choices often. That's the invisible other half of creating the turnover.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. The football indeed takes funny bounces, and sometimes you just plain get lucky. But every season some teams reliably "get lucky" over and over. Often, those teams "get lucky" for multiple seasons on end.
It's funny you bring up the idea that turnovers make you reliant on another team being bad. Sacks sort of do the same thing - you're relying on an O-line being incapable of stopping the D-line, right? But you can fix your odds of getting the sack by bringing linebackers and safeties. What does that tell you? Again, it is a risk/reward assessment. IF you are good at blitzing, AND it's a reasonable risk, THEN it's a good bet to blitz often.
The key thing BB excels in is understaning that no single "trick" can carry you that far. When you play Pittsburgh or the Gintz, the "trick" is pressure. With the Gintz, I think (though maybe I'll be corrected) that's mainly the product of a tradition of drafting great pressure guys. With Pittburgh, it's a playbook full of different blitz looks.
BB might blitz all game, one game, for whatever reason. Then he might play a whole quarter with six defensive backs.
That's an advantage. You have opportunistic players, and then you have opportunistic gameplans. Whatever you're weakest at, BB will exploit.
And guess what? When you go at it that way, every game, you end up "getting lucky." It's been a while since the D has had good enough personnel for this to re-emerge, but high turnover differential was a regular feature of the 2001-2004 squads.
