I don't think you are being an azz, I am pointing a basic breakdown in rational thought. What you exhibit are pathological thought processes that are beginning to dominate this site. The Patroits are not the problem, several posters at patsfans.com are the problem.
Please provide reasons for why you believe the Patriots have been playing Super Bowl calibur football throughout the season instead of just saying that they are over and over and over again.
"Great", "good", and "bad" are subjective terms that can only obtain legitimacy through objective measurement. In football, this is through:
Compilation of statistics
Effective, appliciable action (situational football)
Situational football, eh? Okay, let's go to situational football, especially one that revolves around defense: protecting a fourth quarter lead. Prior to this year, a Bill Belichick defense had only surrendered a fourth quarter lead once since the year 2000. That was prior to this year. In 2009, the Bill Belichick New England Patriots gave up four 4th quarter leads. Four. That's three more than they had given up the eight years prior to that. So yes, this defense, while it may not be bad (as in on the Detroit Lions level), is not good. There are good defenses out there, the 2009 Patriots are not one of them.
In terms of stats, the overriding stat is points allowed. The Pats were 5th in the league in points allowed and were in the top half in most appliciable categories. In fact, in the majority, the Pats defense does much better than your "great" defenses.
They didn't exactly face offensive juggernauts, either. Let's take a look at the amount of points the Pats gave up against top-tier offensive teams:
@ Colts: 35 PA, 21 PA in the 4th quarter, 407 yards allowed.
@ Saints: 38 PA, 5 passing TD's allowed (the most by a BB defense), 480 yards allowed.
@ Texans: 34 PA, 21 PA in the 4th quarter, 439 yards allowed.
So, in each game against top-calibur offenses, the Patriots surrendered over 30 points in each occasion, averaged two TD's allowed in the 4th quarter (situational football?), and allowed over 400 yards of total offense each time. Sad to say, as well, that these are the only three good offenses we played throughout the year, which is why our defensive ranking is so high. So your "statistical accomplishment" argument goes out the window with the "situational football" argument. I could also bring up the Denver game, which saw another blown 4th quarter lead on top of allowing Kyle Orton (of all people) to have a
career day through the air, and yielding two 90+ yard scoring drives, but they aren't a "good" offense. At least not by the standards which I have just set up.
Situational football is really where most of cry babying comes from. I would also point out that I fully support legitimate worry since the defense did surrender 4 second half leads.
I hope you realize that you just blew up your entire argument with that one.
The Jets (who lead in many statistical categories) were not exactly situational football titans. Once again, when the game was on the line against Miami, Jax, Atlanta, and Buffalo the "great" defense collapsed. In all these games, the game was lost because of game changing 4th quarter defenses collapses.
Now you're just cherrypicking. The Jets managed to lose their mauler NT in the first Miami game and still went on to be a good defense (one that just shut out Cincinnati, playing for the third seed and playing their starters, the other night). But let's take a look at those games...
vs. Miami: 164 yards of total offense, 7 PA.
- Though Sanchez did have a decent game. Threw for two TD's with no picks.
vs. Jacksonville: 360 yards of total offense, 21 PA.
- Sanchez also threw two picks compared to one TD in this game which ended two Jets drives and forced the defense to defend the Jaguars twice more.
vs. Buffalo: 229 yards of total offense, 16 PA.
- This game saw Sanchez throw 5 INT's and 0 TD's. Despite that, the Jets were still in the game thanks to their defense, despite the fact that they had to defend five more drives than they should have.
On top of this, I don't think divisional opponents should be included. Divisional opponents are much more familiar with each other than regular non-divisional opponents are, and are much more capable of exploiting weaknesses.
Furthermore, for all the whining about the Miami game,did you ever bother to review how your "great" defense did when they went to Miami? Or how the other six defenses performed in Miami?
Divisional opponents and a game that saw Kris Jenkins, the most important piece of the defense, leave on IR. This really allowed Miami to gash them with the run game. The result wasn't nearly the same the second time around.
See Green Bay play Pittsburgh?
See SF play Minnesota?
See Minnesota play Chicago?
So now we're back to your criteria for a good defense being that they have to have a dominant game, every game, and that they must be undefeated. Got it. By the way, you still haven't touched my point about the '85 Bears getting torched in Miami. But that's not convenient for the argument.
SF and Washington were let down by their offenses?
Yes. Their defenses were stellar. If you believe that they were let down by their defense then I (once again) challenge you to make an argument about how Alex Smith and Jason Campbell are good quarterbacks.
I've gone on record as blaming the offense just as much for this loss. However, the offense didn't allow two 90+ yard scoring drives. Nor was the offense on the field in overtime, expected to stop Denver's offense from winning the game. Both sides were to blame, the defense moreso.
Offense was slowed down by a good defensive effort and Brady was off his game at that point. If you can't admit that the Jets defense played well in that game, then I don't know what to tell you.
Again, both sides are to blame. The offense did stall, but the defense also allowed the likes of Chad Henne and Devonne Bess to have career days while also allowing the Miami offense to go down the field at will. On top of that, the defense was given a 4th quarter lead and allowed the Dolphins to dink and dunk their way down the field for the game-winning field goal, not the offense.
Your problem revolves around your rabid worship of "the blitz". The defense you mentioned are not great based holisitc statistical compilation or superior situational football performance. In Kon's world, they are "great" because they "blitz".
This isn't it. At all. In my first post, I named more than a few of the defenses that you cherrypicked, and explained how they are capable of generating a rush with three to four guys. Dallas being one of them. Minnesota being another. But if you want to talk about blitz, then we can. When those teams DO blitz, they get to the quarterback more often than not. When we blitz, we don't more often than not, and leave ourselves incredibly exposed.
