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It is what is it is. We give up 4.0 YPC about average for NFL teams (tied for 17-20). This isn't terrible. I agree that we need improvement. I'm not sure that we'll get it, other than playing poorer run offenses.
I'm much more worried about the 3rd down performance of the offense, among the very worst in the league.
IMHO, yards per game is not the appropriate stat. When your secondary is lights out, teams will run more.
It isn't the yardage per game that bothers me terribly, it is more of the fact that it's taken a turn in the wrong direction since losing Wilfork and Mayo that is bothering me. Since the gameplan of the opposition is meant to take advantage of our rush defense limitations rather than the pass defense strengths, they are pretty much getting away with what they set out to do.
It seems to be much like the past few yrs where our secondary sucked but our rush defense was good. Obviously the opposition would take advantage of the pass defense, thus putting up big numbers that would often lead to their success or at least competitiveness. Of course some of their success was limited by our offense's ability to score lots of points, so the record/success wasn't always exactly indicative of the success they were having on our defense and secondary.
Since our offense is not the same, we're going to be struggling with closer margins and windows that are not the same as in the past--so no matter which weakness they attempt to attack, if there is success in any form it's going to pose a problem for us (unless our offense goes back to scoring in the 30's etc).
I think that we're still looking at being improved from the past few years (assuming that we don't lose any more players), but I also think this 2013 Pats team is somewhat of an unknown at the moment.
The question seems to be whether we're closer to the 2003, 2005, 2009 teams or closer to the 2008, 2006, or possibly even 2011, 2012 teams. I don't think we'll know until around the beginning of December at the earliest, but in the meantime it's starting to look as if both sides of the ball are mediocre in some aspects, with a hope for improvement in the future.