Sorry for the delayed response but I actually have a life now and can no longer spend every minute of every day on here. Usually I'd just let it go, but debating with you is like fishing with dynamite...
Blah, Blah, blah, stupid is as stupid posts
You can always tell when someone knows their argument is a weak and flawed one. They usually start rolling out the personal insult attempts. In your case, usually pretty weak ones. Step your game up.
Offense scores 31 points.......the defense gave up 27 points.
You say the defense gave up 27 points like it was a good thing.
What, the "pick six" never happened?
Sure it did. And Brady is to blame for that. But the offense tied the game with minutes remaining, putting the defense in the position to make some big time plays to get the team the win in the waning moments. Did they do it? Nope. Instead, the Bills knew what defense we were using and then proceeded to torch it. We lost the game to the Bills for the first time since 2003 because our defense couldn't make timely stops or force timely turnovers when we needed them to.
Since the advent of football, there are universal concepts
Turnovers are the single most important event in determining the winner
Of all turnovers, "Pick Sixes" are the most devastating turnover.
You get a lead and don't close the game out, expect bad things to happen.
This is a huge part of my point. There are going to be games this year, like the Jets game in the playoffs last year, where the offense is either slowed or is shut down for huge stretches of the game. That's where we're going to need the defense to step up big, limit yardage (which means limiting the amount of time the opponent has the ball), and stone them on third down. The New England Patriots defense hasn't shown any consistency in doing that for a couple of years now, and they didn't show it again on Sunday when the offense (that has been powering the team all year now) finally got the lead, only to lose it because they defense couldn't get the Bills' offense off the field.
My guess, is you must sit in your mother's basement in a leisure suit because the rules of 2001/3/4 don't apply in the 2011 NFL. Why this is so difficult to grasp is simply unbelieveable.
I see the Biff Tannen of PatsFans.com is now into making "mother's basement" jokes? Again, step your game up. At least amuse me if you're going to try to deflect from your horrible and weak argument.
As for the rules of the NFL, yes, Polian did change them. But Polian's rules applied in 2007. What happened then is that we actually reached the Super Bowl. And while the offense got much of the credit for that, it's the defense that we're looking at for the purposes of this argument. The defense that year finished 4th in total YPG allowed, 6th in turnovers, and 4th in scoring defense. So the whole argument that Belichick's defenses always used to yield yards while depending on the turnover is crap. We didn't do that in our last Super Bowl year and we didn't do it before that. Since we have been supposedly content with allowing yards while trying to force turnovers, we've been one and done in the playoffs.
Based on today's rules, the dynasty defenses would have hammered out a couple hundred yards of penalties a game. Likewise, many of the drives this year (refer to the San Diego/ Buffalo games) would have been stops under those rules.
I wanted to separate this point from the last one. This argument is a fundamentally flawed one. The rules changes occurred
before the 2004 season. During the 2004 season, we were still able to limit the amount of yardage that we gave up while also creating enough turnovers to win the game. In 2006, we were 6th in YPG surrendered and 4th in turnovers. I've already given the stats for 2007. In those three years, we won the Super Bowl, came up one game short of it because of key injuries to personnel, and went into the Super Bowl undefeated where our defense, that didn't allow a lot of yardage, ultimately kept us in the game and gave our offense as many opportunities as they could to score. 2009 was the year where we began to give up yardage and rely on opponents to shoot themselves in the foot after getting down the field. The results ever since have been two straight seasons of one-and-done's. So you tell me? Are turnovers and YPG surrendered mutually exclusive, as you're trying to claim they are? Or is the ultimate goal for this and any defense to turn the opposing offense over while not allowing 400+ yards of total offense on a weekly basis? I would go with the latter.
As far as what Belichick thinks, I don't know and really don't care.
You should, as he's the team's head coach and is ultimately in control of the defense. But since you decided to dodge the question (again), I'll go ahead and make the point for you: Coaches who are happy with a defense usually don't make wholesale changes to it (including changing the base formation and bringing in the likes of Albert Haynesworth while drafting a CB early in the second round) after a 14-2 season. Belichick actually did that, and I'm guessing that the results still aren't where he wants them.
What I do know and you can't grasp is the following:
In the Miami game, the defense was excellent for 3 1/2 quarters and the Patriots built a muli score lead. The surrender of 250 yards in the last eight minutes is lamentable mainly because it lead to much dumb "analysis" post game. patsfans.com was a noticeable participant.
What I know and what I've pointed out is that this defense has a lot of potential. We have the horses in the stable to be a championship contender defense, in spite of the deficiencies at safety. With that said, they either haven't realized that potential yet, or are too lazy to realize it. In the Miami game, the Dolphins offense was gaining sizeable amounts of yardage and keeping the ball for long periods of time even before the 4th quarter. The only difference is that nobody really cared about it because the offense, and Brady in particular, was firing on all cylinders.
As I pointed out to "supafly", the defense followed the perfect gameplan to beat San Diego:
Eliminate Gates
Zero big plays as seen in the 2008 Deltha O Neill Bowl
Make them work the ball because as Rivers ALWAYS does, he makes mistakes.
I never said I had a problem with the gameplan of the San Diego game, so this point is irrelevant. What I had a problem with was the execution of the gameplan, which failed down the stretch. There was a big play to Vincent Jackson in the latter stages of the game that I'm guessing Belichick wasn't happy with. But, again, the defensive issues in that game were overshadowed because the offense went off again.
My guess would actually be that Belichick was pleased after San Diego. The Tuesday Rapoport article shows that turnovers were emphasized before that game.
You're not much of a critical thinker, are you? Of course turnovers were emphasized. As you said, that's the best way to win a game. However, just because turnovers were emphasized doesn't mean that the ultimate goal of the game was to allow yardage to the San Diego offense. Belichick is always looking for things to work on with the team. I'm guessing the amount of yardage given up to the San Diego offense was one of them.
As far as Buffalo goes, the determining factor was four turnovers and a pick six. When you have the opponent on the ropes, you put them away with a time consuming, scoring drive.
The offense had five or six chances to put the game away and didn't. Give the opponent too many chances and eventually they figure something out.
That's Sunday.
That's the whole point. There will be games when the offense will have the opponent "on the ropes" and simply won't be able to finish them off. We've seen this time and time again since 2009. In those instances, we need our defense to step up either by turning the opponent over, or by allowing the least amount of yardage that is possible in order to give the offense the ball back with as many opportunities as they can get to score and put the game away. Simply put, sometimes we're going to see the offense with a need to lean on the defense in order to win the game. By and large since 2009, when that has happened, we have not won the game. Buffalo was yet another example. As for the turnovers by the offense, no question they hurt. But the important thing to remember is that the offense put up 31 points, which should be enough to win for any team. But not for the New England Patriots. Reason? The defense broke down toward the end of the first half, never recovered, and ultimately failed when we needed them the most. If that's what you're happy with, then I'm glad that Belichick is coaching the team and not you...
It's like patsfans.com hates the Peyton treatment but when given the chance goes "Peyton" on Brady. Therefore, every dumb excuse is exercised so the blame for the loss isn't placed where is squarely belongs.
Like our coach that you can't seem to find any fault with, I've blamed the loss on the TEAM as a whole. It's you that is trying to exonerate the defense using every excuse in the book.
What next, "cut that meat" commercials?
What's*.
