Homer observations as we go into the last games...

PatsFanInVa said:

1. There is no way to think this D is good given any way of looking at it this season. So far. The Pats aren't the Rats. They find a way to win and disguise weaknesses. That said, this year it appears you really can just say "the defense" in general is a weakness. It is a relief that you can say the same for all teams, compared with a dimensionless ideal. But let's just say that, a lot, to make sure that D haters realize that I get it.

I can't emphasize this next point enough, on grammatical grounds alone: a lot of people who know football well show their misunderstanding of our language by using "porous" in such a way as to imply that it means "poor" but with an extra syllable. "Porous," you know, what the Romans called something of poor quality.

In reality, porous signifies a property of permeability in a solid. So for example, granite is not very porous as compared with coral.

Now let me go beyond the misuse one sees so often, the one where somebody just likes the sound of the "-ous" suffix, but basically believes "porous" to mean that something is "poor," rather than that it has pores, as it were.

There's another level of fail if we call the Pats 2018 D porous, even if we understand the meaning of the word. The key properties here, permeability and solidity, might not both be met regularly enough to use the word properly. At what point does a quality of having many holes dissolve into a property of having only an occasional glimmer of solid matter?

Even I can't homer my way out of it. they're just really bad. They're bad at pressuring the QB. They're bad at coverage. They're bad at run D. They're a bend and then break defense. They couldn't cover a three-chord song. As far as interceptions go, they can't catch the clap in a Bangkok brothel.

The only good thing seems to be that 2/3 of teams are worse. Fine for regular season, as we like to say, but not for playoffs.

The only way out of this is if we perform particularly well in the playoffs. Hey wait, that tends to happen often.

So, there's that.

Okay now here are the homer bright spots:
Tied for 5th in interceptions, with 14.
A little misleading. Subtract 5, and you're at #22 on the list, Atlanta, with 9 int.
Add 5 int.s, and you're at no. 2 on the list, Miami.
Basically, we're in the first of 2 levels of "pack" after non-pack leaders Miami (19) and Chicago (25).

We're middle of the pack in passes defensed (T-15th), about in line with that "part of the pack" performance on the interception side. Interestingly, we're tied with Miami. Their pass D, statistically, plays the ball about like ours, except they intercept the ball around 25% more often. (Although how many pass attempts there have been against each is not covered in this whole-number "analysis.")

Fumbles forced: Middle of the pack (T-11th, but behind an outliers tier [~spots 1-7]…After the outliers, smack in the middle of the pack)…
Fumbles recovered: Not many who are much worse - but there are a bunch of teams that are as bad or a recovery or 2 behind us. Again, not good - not the worst, but not good.
We've forced 12 fumbles, and recovered 6. Cf Cleveland, forced 18, recovered 13. LA Rams - forced 13, recovered 11. (This probably traces back to our low number of sacks).

11th in Giveaways/Takeaways. Top 1/3 of the league, +6. trouble is, in the playoffs, we can basically throw out the bottom 2/3. So.
2018 NFL Team Givetake Stats - National Football League - ESPN

We place at the end of the "gradual decline" descending from the standout teams (no. 1 is Chigago, +13,) through a "pack" each with 1 or 2 less G/T than the next team up the ladder. After us and the next team (NYG, # 12 with +5,) it all goes to hell.

Per the above, the G/T of +6 is not due to a lights-out D. It's more the result of being relatively competent at holding on to the ball on offense.

11th in scoring defense. See above. Top 1/3 (roughly) again, in a league rejiggered every 10 minutes to allow more points than I had on my license in college. (i.e. a lot.) (12th in points per game- the Chargers are figured differently since they've played.)
Not bad. Just not great. Or very good, actually, compared with our yards allowed, the misleading stat you hear from game day thread drama queens (we're # 22.) That's a matter of "sorry, Charlie, when BB's ahead he likes his soft zone." Of course, he might also be playing with the Vegas line, who knows.

2018 NFL Team Total Stats - National Football League - ESPN

In any event, here's the good part: We're giving up 22.5 per game. The top of the pack is Baltimore at 18.5. A case of "So's your old man," that is to say, nobody is playing lights out.

Holding offense constant - which is quite a favor, in Balto's case - yields a 4.0 differential. That does not scare me like a 7 point or more differential would. (A 7 point differential from Balto gets you to the NYG scoring D, 25.5 ppg, #22.) By the same token, we'd have a 3.0 differential over NYG.

We also allow 76.5 more yards per game than Baltimore which is a huge differential, and in years when we beat them, always makes them really angry that they didn't win. And one more Balto stat: +1. That's their win/loss differential. The pathetic thing is that might be good enough for us to see them post season, coming out of the AFCN.

PS, Also by the same token, while we're mentioning the NYG in a stat discussion... 2007. So, there is nothing that we can know until games are played. We can just characterize small sample sizes.

Thanks. I just thought with all the "worst defense in the world" sentiment it would be instructive to look and see how bad this D is.

The numbers (even at this very superficial level) look like the numbers of a 9-4 team. They don't look like the stats of a world-beater. They don't look like the stats of the "worst team in the world."

It looks like a flawed team among flawed teams.

I dunno, you guys are smart about this stuff, ejumacate me. Beware though, as valid as a given "eye test" might be... it's just too useful for papering over the few objective truths we can compile.

And that said... we still won't know what will happen in the next game, even if we are exactly right about what's happened so far.

Son of a B****!!!!!

Click to expand...

Tony2046 said:

Porous would portray the Pats run defense accurately imo. A lot of running holes = porous.


I'm not in a Kontra type total overhaul mode but am disappointed in the Shelton experiment and wish that he would have worked out but obviously he hasn't. Get a solid NT and I think this defense looks a lot better.

This year will rely on Brady and the ST's to do their part. If they do that the Pats have a decent shot at another SB but depending on who they are facing will determine on whether or not they have a decent shot at another championship.

Click to expand...

DarrylS said:

So if I go by my highly scientific and often lauded theory, we are in the top 25% in terms of overall defense.. is it half empty as my eyeballs tell me or is it half full as my theory tells me??? Inquiring minds want to know..

Click to expand...

Tony2046 said:

Porous would portray the Pats run defense accurately imo. A lot of running holes = porous.


I'm not in a Kontra type total overhaul mode but am disappointed in the Shelton experiment and wish that he would have worked out but obviously he hasn't. Get a solid NT and I think this defense looks a lot better.

This year will rely on Brady and the ST's to do their part. If they do that the Pats have a decent shot at another SB but depending on who they are facing will determine on whether or not they have a decent shot at another championship.

Click to expand...

Tony2046 said:

Porous would portray the Pats run defense accurately imo. A lot of running holes = porous.


I'm not in a Kontra type total overhaul mode but am disappointed in the Shelton experiment and wish that he would have worked out but obviously he hasn't. Get a solid NT and I think this defense looks a lot better.

This year will rely on Brady and the ST's to do their part. If they do that the Pats have a decent shot at another SB but depending on who they are facing will determine on whether or not they have a decent shot at another championship.

Click to expand...

PatsFanInVa said:

1. There is no way to think this D is good given any way of looking at it this season. So far. The Pats aren't the Rats. They find a way to win and disguise weaknesses. That said, this year it appears you really can just say "the defense" in general is a weakness. It is a relief that you can say the same for all teams, compared with a dimensionless ideal. But let's just say that, a lot, to make sure that D haters realize that I get it.

I can't emphasize this next point enough, on grammatical grounds alone: a lot of people who know football well show their misunderstanding of our language by using "porous" in such a way as to imply that it means "poor" but with an extra syllable. "Porous," you know, what the Romans called something of poor quality.

In reality, porous signifies a property of permeability in a solid. So for example, granite is not very porous as compared with coral.

Now let me go beyond the misuse one sees so often, the one where somebody just likes the sound of the "-ous" suffix, but basically believes "porous" to mean that something is "poor," rather than that it has pores, as it were.

There's another level of fail if we call the Pats 2018 D porous, even if we understand the meaning of the word. The key properties here, permeability and solidity, might not both be met regularly enough to use the word properly. At what point does a quality of having many holes dissolve into a property of having only an occasional glimmer of solid matter?

Even I can't homer my way out of it. they're just really bad. They're bad at pressuring the QB. They're bad at coverage. They're bad at run D. They're a bend and then break defense. They couldn't cover a three-chord song. As far as interceptions go, they can't catch the clap in a Bangkok brothel.

The only good thing seems to be that 2/3 of teams are worse. Fine for regular season, as we like to say, but not for playoffs.

The only way out of this is if we perform particularly well in the playoffs. Hey wait, that tends to happen often.

So, there's that.

Okay now here are the homer bright spots:
Tied for 5th in interceptions, with 14.
A little misleading. Subtract 5, and you're at #22 on the list, Atlanta, with 9 int.
Add 5 int.s, and you're at no. 2 on the list, Miami.
Basically, we're in the first of 2 levels of "pack" after non-pack leaders Miami (19) and Chicago (25).

We're middle of the pack in passes defensed (T-15th), about in line with that "part of the pack" performance on the interception side. Interestingly, we're tied with Miami. Their pass D, statistically, plays the ball about like ours, except they intercept the ball around 25% more often. (Although how many pass attempts there have been against each is not covered in this whole-number "analysis.")

Fumbles forced: Middle of the pack (T-11th, but behind an outliers tier [~spots 1-7]…After the outliers, smack in the middle of the pack)…
Fumbles recovered: Not many who are much worse - but there are a bunch of teams that are as bad or a recovery or 2 behind us. Again, not good - not the worst, but not good.
We've forced 12 fumbles, and recovered 6. Cf Cleveland, forced 18, recovered 13. LA Rams - forced 13, recovered 11. (This probably traces back to our low number of sacks).

11th in Giveaways/Takeaways. Top 1/3 of the league, +6. trouble is, in the playoffs, we can basically throw out the bottom 2/3. So.
2018 NFL Team Givetake Stats - National Football League - ESPN

We place at the end of the "gradual decline" descending from the standout teams (no. 1 is Chigago, +13,) through a "pack" each with 1 or 2 less G/T than the next team up the ladder. After us and the next team (NYG, # 12 with +5,) it all goes to hell.

Per the above, the G/T of +6 is not due to a lights-out D. It's more the result of being relatively competent at holding on to the ball on offense.

11th in scoring defense. See above. Top 1/3 (roughly) again, in a league rejiggered every 10 minutes to allow more points than I had on my license in college. (i.e. a lot.) (12th in points per game- the Chargers are figured differently since they've played.)
Not bad. Just not great. Or very good, actually, compared with our yards allowed, the misleading stat you hear from game day thread drama queens (we're # 22.) That's a matter of "sorry, Charlie, when BB's ahead he likes his soft zone." Of course, he might also be playing with the Vegas line, who knows.

2018 NFL Team Total Stats - National Football League - ESPN

In any event, here's the good part: We're giving up 22.5 per game. The top of the pack is Baltimore at 18.5. A case of "So's your old man," that is to say, nobody is playing lights out.

Holding offense constant - which is quite a favor, in Balto's case - yields a 4.0 differential. That does not scare me like a 7 point or more differential would. (A 7 point differential from Balto gets you to the NYG scoring D, 25.5 ppg, #22.) By the same token, we'd have a 3.0 differential over NYG.

We also allow 76.5 more yards per game than Baltimore which is a huge differential, and in years when we beat them, always makes them really angry that they didn't win. And one more Balto stat: +1. That's their win/loss differential. The pathetic thing is that might be good enough for us to see them post season, coming out of the AFCN.

PS, Also by the same token, while we're mentioning the NYG in a stat discussion... 2007. So, there is nothing that we can know until games are played. We can just characterize small sample sizes.

Thanks. I just thought with all the "worst defense in the world" sentiment it would be instructive to look and see how bad this D is.

The numbers (even at this very superficial level) look like the numbers of a 9-4 team. They don't look like the stats of a world-beater. They don't look like the stats of the "worst team in the world."

It looks like a flawed team among flawed teams.

I dunno, you guys are smart about this stuff, ejumacate me. Beware though, as valid as a given "eye test" might be... it's just too useful for papering over the few objective truths we can compile.

And that said... we still won't know what will happen in the next game, even if we are exactly right about what's happened so far.

Son of a B****!!!!!

Click to expand...

PatsFanInVa said:

1. There is no way to think this D is good given any way of looking at it this season. So far. The Pats aren't the Rats. They find a way to win and disguise weaknesses. That said, this year it appears you really can just say "the defense" in general is a weakness. It is a relief that you can say the same for all teams, compared with a dimensionless ideal. But let's just say that, a lot, to make sure that D haters realize that I get it.

I can't emphasize this next point enough, on grammatical grounds alone: a lot of people who know football well show their misunderstanding of our language by using "porous" in such a way as to imply that it means "poor" but with an extra syllable. "Porous," you know, what the Romans called something of poor quality.

In reality, porous signifies a property of permeability in a solid. So for example, granite is not very porous as compared with coral.

Now let me go beyond the misuse one sees so often, the one where somebody just likes the sound of the "-ous" suffix, but basically believes "porous" to mean that something is "poor," rather than that it has pores, as it were.

There's another level of fail if we call the Pats 2018 D porous, even if we understand the meaning of the word. The key properties here, permeability and solidity, might not both be met regularly enough to use the word properly. At what point does a quality of having many holes dissolve into a property of having only an occasional glimmer of solid matter?

Even I can't homer my way out of it. they're just really bad. They're bad at pressuring the QB. They're bad at coverage. They're bad at run D. They're a bend and then break defense. They couldn't cover a three-chord song. As far as interceptions go, they can't catch the clap in a Bangkok brothel.

The only good thing seems to be that 2/3 of teams are worse. Fine for regular season, as we like to say, but not for playoffs.

The only way out of this is if we perform particularly well in the playoffs. Hey wait, that tends to happen often.

So, there's that.

Okay now here are the homer bright spots:
Tied for 5th in interceptions, with 14.
A little misleading. Subtract 5, and you're at #22 on the list, Atlanta, with 9 int.
Add 5 int.s, and you're at no. 2 on the list, Miami.
Basically, we're in the first of 2 levels of "pack" after non-pack leaders Miami (19) and Chicago (25).

We're middle of the pack in passes defensed (T-15th), about in line with that "part of the pack" performance on the interception side. Interestingly, we're tied with Miami. Their pass D, statistically, plays the ball about like ours, except they intercept the ball around 25% more often. (Although how many pass attempts there have been against each is not covered in this whole-number "analysis.")

Fumbles forced: Middle of the pack (T-11th, but behind an outliers tier [~spots 1-7]…After the outliers, smack in the middle of the pack)…
Fumbles recovered: Not many who are much worse - but there are a bunch of teams that are as bad or a recovery or 2 behind us. Again, not good - not the worst, but not good.
We've forced 12 fumbles, and recovered 6. Cf Cleveland, forced 18, recovered 13. LA Rams - forced 13, recovered 11. (This probably traces back to our low number of sacks).

11th in Giveaways/Takeaways. Top 1/3 of the league, +6. trouble is, in the playoffs, we can basically throw out the bottom 2/3. So.
2018 NFL Team Givetake Stats - National Football League - ESPN

We place at the end of the "gradual decline" descending from the standout teams (no. 1 is Chigago, +13,) through a "pack" each with 1 or 2 less G/T than the next team up the ladder. After us and the next team (NYG, # 12 with +5,) it all goes to hell.

Per the above, the G/T of +6 is not due to a lights-out D. It's more the result of being relatively competent at holding on to the ball on offense.

11th in scoring defense. See above. Top 1/3 (roughly) again, in a league rejiggered every 10 minutes to allow more points than I had on my license in college. (i.e. a lot.) (12th in points per game- the Chargers are figured differently since they've played.)
Not bad. Just not great. Or very good, actually, compared with our yards allowed, the misleading stat you hear from game day thread drama queens (we're # 22.) That's a matter of "sorry, Charlie, when BB's ahead he likes his soft zone." Of course, he might also be playing with the Vegas line, who knows.

2018 NFL Team Total Stats - National Football League - ESPN

In any event, here's the good part: We're giving up 22.5 per game. The top of the pack is Baltimore at 18.5. A case of "So's your old man," that is to say, nobody is playing lights out.

Holding offense constant - which is quite a favor, in Balto's case - yields a 4.0 differential. That does not scare me like a 7 point or more differential would. (A 7 point differential from Balto gets you to the NYG scoring D, 25.5 ppg, #22.) By the same token, we'd have a 3.0 differential over NYG.

We also allow 76.5 more yards per game than Baltimore which is a huge differential, and in years when we beat them, always makes them really angry that they didn't win. And one more Balto stat: +1. That's their win/loss differential. The pathetic thing is that might be good enough for us to see them post season, coming out of the AFCN.

PS, Also by the same token, while we're mentioning the NYG in a stat discussion... 2007. So, there is nothing that we can know until games are played. We can just characterize small sample sizes.

Thanks. I just thought with all the "worst defense in the world" sentiment it would be instructive to look and see how bad this D is.

The numbers (even at this very superficial level) look like the numbers of a 9-4 team. They don't look like the stats of a world-beater. They don't look like the stats of the "worst team in the world."

It looks like a flawed team among flawed teams.

I dunno, you guys are smart about this stuff, ejumacate me. Beware though, as valid as a given "eye test" might be... it's just too useful for papering over the few objective truths we can compile.

And that said... we still won't know what will happen in the next game, even if we are exactly right about what's happened so far.

Son of a B****!!!!!

Click to expand...

PatsWSB47 said:

I dunno, I read porous defense differently than I hear it. As a Pats fan all I hear is "poor us" defense.

Click to expand...

AndyJohnson said:

One point, passes defensed is a pretty useless and widely misused stat. A big chunk of them are batted balls and there is no real value in judging coverage by calling an incomplete that a defender touched something different than any other incomplete.
The patriots for example have 55 pass defensed out of 190 not completed passes.
The 190 (as well as its percentage and the length of throw, yac, and first downs allowed)is a much more important number.

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DarrylS said:

My eyeball tells me that we have a porous defense, but as I do not watch a lot of other games, suspect many other teams do as well in these offensive times..

A great stat I go by is points against.. and currently your NEP are 4th in the AFC with 293 points against, trailing Ravens, Tenn and Houston.. in the whole league they are 8th trailing the aforementioned 3 + Bears, Cowboys, Saints and Seahawks..

So if I go by my highly scientific and often lauded theory, we are in the top 25% in terms of overall defense.. is it half empty as my eyeballs tell me or is it half full as my theory tells me??? Inquiring minds want to know..

Click to expand...