Defending the defense

[JMC00]

But in all fairness, we have yet to go up against an elite passer (Roethlisberger was hurt by his team's poor play and coaching blunders) and the Bills sorta lit up our defense in the 4th quarter during Week 2, where we gave up the most points we've had all season long.

Meh.

I don't want to hear anything about poor play and coaching blunders. Simply put for 59:58 seconds Roethlisburger had only put up 14 points. Down 28-14 with 7 minutes to go he tried to go deep and Harmon made a play. That wasn't poor play or coaching blunder that was a Pats defender making a play. And before the last drive of the game he had 250 yards passing.

As for the bills game was 37-13 in the 4th and the defense kind of got screwed by the Pats offense trying to step on the bills throats. Which ended up with the bills getting the ball twice at midfield. But the defense made a play when they needed it when Ryan came down with an interception and ended the game.

 

[convertedpatsfan]

One could interpret that to mean that the patriots defense is good when teams are still trying to run the ball. In the second half the patriots defense is exposed because teams decide to pass more.

I haven't seen the data set, but if they are 4th in yards per play, and 8th in yards per carry, doesn't that suggest the exact opposite since you'd have to be higher in pass yards allowed to balance out the 8th ranking in run?

There are already a lot of posts about points and yards allowed in garbage time. And some of those happen with the bench guys on the field in blowouts. But the data suggests when the game is competitive, so is our pass D.