Can We Settle Down Regarding The Defense?

[DarrylS]

IMO the issue with all of this are the metrics that we have been all been brought up and learned to believe in determining how to judge an NFL defense.. so we get all focused on flashy stats and ignore the obvious.. the NEP have scored more points than the other team. And in the past 6 weeks they have done that extremely well..

At the end of the season it is how many wins and how many losses, who you beat and how many points a team scores..

 

[Uptown]

Let’s take a look at the only stat that matters:

Taking a look at the Patriot D from a 2017 statistical picture, why would anyone think the Steelers can't score 30?
Below is the Patriots D statistical rankings followed by the critically important yet continually depressing graphs.

32 in pass yards per game
32 in yards allowed per possession.
32 rush yards per attempt
27 in accumulated sacks
27 in net yards per pass completion
25 rushing yards allowed
25 Passing TDs allowed
20 in TD % allowed
20 in completion% allowed
16 3rd down conversion%
16 average points per opposition possesion


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[luuked]

Taking a look at the Patriot D from a 2017 statistical picture, why would anyone think the Steelers can't score 30?
Below is the Patriots D statistical rankings followed by the critically important yet continually depressing graphs.

32 in pass yards per game
32 in yards allowed per possession.
32 rush yards per attempt
27 in accumulated sacks
27 in net yards per pass completion
25 rushing yards allowed
25 Passing TDs allowed
20 in TD % allowed
20 in completion% allowed
16 3rd down conversion%
16 average points per opposition possesion


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I wish we could ban posting those meaningless stats from the board or at least put them all into a fantasy-era sub board where they belong. The only stat that matters is the win/loss column.

We have been through this every year for more than a decade it feels. All of this garbage correlates with a win record for average teams but a) correlation is not causation and b) the Patriots under BB are playing anything but average.

Even those new-gen stats like DVOA that get jerked off week-by-week are utter garbage. Our defense was actually downgraded last week in DVOA after we essentially shut down the Raiders and lost a spot to the Dolphins who gave up more than twice the points to the freaking Bucs at home.

I am sorry, but the only way to talk about football that makes sense is to actually start the game recordings look at reasons why certain breakdowns happen again and again, try to formulate some kind of hypothesis what the reason for this could be and then and go through individual matchups for future opponents and see how much of an issue this could be. But that requires slightly more work than looking at a table of cumulative stats.

I am fully understanding why BB is how he is with the media at this point because a lot of the stupid takes in fan boards and how they are trying to pass off googling rankings as "research" because they are too lazy to actually do real research also makes me wanna stick a fork in my brain. But this is what the fantasy era has brought us..

 

[JMC00]

Even those new-gen stats like DVOA

Stat geeks can take a team that is based on defensive DVOA. I'll take a defense that has allowed more than 20 points only 3 times this year and has gone 6 straight games holding opponents to 17 or fewer points and is averaging only 12.5 ppg allowed in that span.

 

[RobertWeathers]

Taking a look at the Patriot D from a 2017 statistical picture, why would anyone think the Steelers can't score 30?
Below is the Patriots D statistical rankings followed by the critically important yet continually depressing graphs.

32 in pass yards per game
32 in yards allowed per possession.
32 rush yards per attempt
27 in accumulated sacks
27 in net yards per pass completion
25 rushing yards allowed
25 Passing TDs allowed
20 in TD % allowed
20 in completion% allowed
16 3rd down conversion%
16 average points per opposition possesion


View attachment 18706
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....and somehow they are stingy with allowing points.

They really are an anomaly

 

[Ring 6]

....and somehow they are stingy with allowing points.

They really are an anomaly

This is why cumulative stats are so flawed.

Season long stats are meaningless when there is a massive chance in in field results.
Would you rather allow, by game, in order:

3
10
7
14
22
27
24
28
27
30

Or
35
30
34
28
14
17
13
16
7
10


First team allows 19.2 ppg but 26.3 in the last 6 games

Second allows 20.4 but 12.8 in the last 6.

 

[Ring 6]

Stat geeks can take a team that is based on defensive DVOA. I'll take a defense that has allowed more than 20 points only 3 times this year and has gone 6 straight games holding opponents to 17 or fewer points and is averaging only 12.5 ppg allowed in that span.

Football has never been a game effectively measured by statistics. Statistics are short hand for understanding the game and what you see happen in the field.
We actually see people on this board act as if a formula created for people who don’t understand football is the only assessment that should be used in a qb even when it puts the worst passing offense and worst scoring offense in the NFL in a positive light because while not moving the ball effectively or scoring points it hit the statistics that matter to the formula but still equal poor football.

 

[Oswlek]

Even those new-gen stats like DVOA that get jerked off week-by-week are utter garbage.

I find DVOA immensely useful. For the most part it offers insight general stats (including points) lack, and even the anamolies help foster interesting dialogue.

FWIW, football outsiders is well aware of the discrepancy between NE's defensive DVOA and points allowed. They are also aware that this is a longer term trend, which suggests that their formula is missing something.

The problem is that the things NE "fails" at correlate extremely well with bad defense for the rest of the league, so any tweak to "fix" NE worsens utility overall.

As with many things, that stat isn't garbage, but arguments that utilize it without proper context can be.

 

[FourierSeries]

Taking a look at the Patriot D from a 2017 statistical picture, why would anyone think the Steelers can't score 30?
Below is the Patriots D statistical rankings followed by the critically important yet continually depressing graphs.

32 in pass yards per game
32 in yards allowed per possession.
32 rush yards per attempt
27 in accumulated sacks
27 in net yards per pass completion
25 rushing yards allowed
25 Passing TDs allowed
20 in TD % allowed
20 in completion% allowed
16 3rd down conversion%
16 average points per opposition possesion


View attachment 18706
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View attachment 18708

You're looking at stats that cover the first 4 games, when the defense had major communication issues that have now been fixed. They've held teams to 17 or under in 6 consecutive games. This unit has been dominant for over a month now.

You're also ignoring the fact the Steelers have had a mediocre offense this season, and they've played a bunch of poor to mediocre defenses. Big Ben has been utter garbage.

0% chance the Steelers put up 30.

 

[captain stone]

Do you think Pitt will put up 30+?

If Brown, Bell & the Rapist are all healthy at game time, then I can see them scoring 30 if they have to.
Remember, the Rapist was inactive for the game at PitsDirt last season.

 

[captain stone]

...If we can...generate more pass rush...

And just how, exactly, is that going to happen?

 

[SammyBlueCat]

Early this season, we had opponents running free and uncontested down the field for 20+ yard chunks of yardage. Now that has become somewhat rare.

 

[TheBostonStraggler]

The original post was intended to be wise-assery with the generic 2017 stats snapshot painting a bad D picture, however, below the stats were the graphs (also re-posted below) for first downs allowed, passing yards allowed, points allowed. The graphs show a dramatically improving D with the trends all moving nicely in the right direction.

 

[Ivan]

Since the Tampa bay game, we appear to Have solved some of our issues on defense by switching to pure man coverage.

We switched partially because it appears Gilmore is too stupid to learn zone coverage and also because we have yet another udfa stepping up and contributing big time - J. Jones. His contribution to the improvement of this defense can not be overlooked.

If we can fix the run defense (m brown’s return would help) and generate more pass rush, we should have a very strong defense, if injuries don’t get us, for the rest of the year,

Your first paragraph is decent, the second beyond stupid, but you close out with an obvious but accurate remark. If you keep writing like this you won’t look entirely stupid.

 

[TommyD4207]

If Brown, Bell & the Rapist are all healthy at game time, then I can see them scoring 30 if they have to.
Remember, the Rapist was inactive for the game at PitsDirt last season.

He wasn't in the playoffs.

He wasn't for the season opener in 2016, when the Steelers were calling timeouts in a vain attempt to try to cover the spread with 1 second left.

 

[luuked]

I find DVOA immensely useful. For the most part it offers insight general stats (including points) lack, and even the anamolies help foster interesting dialogue.

FWIW, football outsiders is well aware of the discrepancy between NE's defensive DVOA and points allowed. They are also aware that this is a longer term trend, which suggests that their formula is missing something.

The problem is that the things NE "fails" at correlate extremely well with bad defense for the rest of the league, so any tweak to "fix" NE worsens utility overall.

As with many things, that stat isn't garbage, but arguments that utilize it without proper context can be.

I am sorry but DVOA and any other stat is mostly useless in a sport where you have major injuries every week, every team has a different schedule and situational football & matchups rule each game.

Its model can inherently not account for what NE is doing because the BB / MP defense is literally breaking its base assumption that yards matter. They have no answer for how NE keeps playing a "five minute defense" and just continue to mark them down for something that actually increases the win probabilities.

What makes things worse is that they are still taking into account what happened in September as if that matters at all at this point of the year.

Similarly at the same time they are weighting down games e.g. against KC and Texans because both teams are in a slump now (due to Smith regressing back to himself and the Texans losing Watt, Mercilus and Watson) even though we played them when they were at their peak.

Point is you cant build any truly useful stat for football because almost all aspects of it are too volatile and the sample size is too small.

Kudos to FO trying to build something but in two weeks our team will shred the 22% SB favorite Steelers and I cant wait to read how FO rationalizes it this year.

 

[TheBostonStraggler]

Kudos to FO trying to build something but in two weeks our team will shred the 22% SB favorite Steelers and I cant wait to read how FO rationalizes it this year.

How about one of their crack football statisticians clicked on a "Scarlett Johansen Naked" link that caused a virus which then caused the normally laser precise numbers to be askew?

 

[Soliel]

One message board has a steeler fan saying “ you patriot fans are stupid, the zones gonna work this time d%#*!@t”

Couldn’t read after that cause I got laughing

 

[maineman209]

Since the Tampa bay game, we appear to Have solved some of our issues on defense by switching to pure man coverage.

We switched partially because it appears Gilmore is too stupid to learn zone coverage and also because we have yet another udfa stepping up and contributing big time - J. Jones. His contribution to the improvement of this defense can not be overlooked.

If we can fix the run defense (m brown’s return would help) and generate more pass rush, we should have a very strong defense, if injuries don’t get us, for the rest of the year,

The run-D by the interior DL seems to have improved, IMHO. The continuing problem has been edge-contain (due in large part to the now-departed Marsh).

Though Brown's return might help the interior pass rush, I'm not sure that it makes a significant difference to the run-D. RJF seems to have been performing adequately so far in that regard, and Reilly/M. Flowers may help with edge-contain.

 

[maineman209]

And just how, exactly, is that going to happen?

BOLDEN! (obviously)