Henderson's backup(Jasper Brinkley) has actually played very well, especially considering he's only a 5th round rookie.
Is it just me, or do alot of these playoff teams' Ds look pretty bad? No - I'm not calling out the Pats or anyone in particular(the Pats D looks very good), but other playoff calibur teams like the Eagles, Cards, Packers, Bengals, Broncos, Steelers, et al haven't looked so hot either.
And the Chargers D hasn't looked too great either - they have trouble covering TEs, their pass rush is just merely decent, and the reason why we don't hear much of this is b/c they're on a long winning streak(so we don't hear much about their weaknesses).
Brinkley has played well, but he's atrocious when the Vikings play zone. He just can't cover anyone and it showed last night when Olsen was doing what he wanted.
The Bengals defense is I think the most solid out of all the playoff teams.
The Eagles have a major problem covering TEs and RBs. Combined, here are the stats:
RBs and TEs pass completions, yards, and TDs against the Eagles defense:
124 completions
1362 yards
10 TDs
37% of the completions, 43% of the passing yards, and 41% of the TDs they have given up this season are to RBs and TEs. Another key in those stats is they tend to give up a lot of YAC.
The Cardinals defense is only solid against horrible offensive teams and even then they manage to falter and have only had one good showing against a solid offense at the time (game against the Giants).
The Broncos defense played at such a high octane level the first few weeks that they gave out and it showed after their bye week when they got murdered by the Ravens and since then have gone AWOL. Only really good showings they had were against the Giants (who at that time were lousy) and the Chiefs.
The Steelers have the same problems that the Vikings have in that they have a solid pass rush but an atrocious secondary and the loss of Polamalu really effected them.
The Packers do have a very good run defense. On average, they give up 3.6 yards a carry and have only had 5 rushing TDs against them. They are susceptible to the pass however and have given up 28 passing TDs. But, they do intercept the ball (27 Ints).
The Cowboys defense has gotten better during the season (save for the Giants game a couple of weeks ago). They have a solid D-line and I said it last week, Mike Jenkins is becoming one of the best corners in the league.
The Saints defense. We all know what it is. They rely heavily on turnovers (especially in the passing game). They haven't improved that much from last year statistically speaking, but they have improved dramatically in the turnover department (26 last year, 41 this year).
Just a quick analysis on most of the teams defenses heading into the playoffs. I don't know why I did this. I just kept going for some reason.
