Defense in Decline?

[paulska]

So you took the 09-14 seasons, and

- Arbitrarily took out the entire 2010 season (removing a 4 INT game from Eli, a 3 INT game from Favre, and a 1 INT game from Favre where he completed well under 50% of his passes)
- Arbitrarily took out a quarter of Warner
- Arbitrarily called Eli Manning, Roethlisberger, and Kaepernick the best QBs we have faced, but not Ryan, Stafford, Flacco, Romo, Cutler, etc.

Your reasoning for omitting the 2010 was that we had a dominant defense then. So essentially your conclusion was that in years that our defense was bad, elite QB's did very well against us? I don't really understand what that proves. I think we would have all assumed this was pretty much true.

This seems to be a case of statistics being able to say whatever a person wants them to say.

I think what it proves is that for four of the past five seasons, our defense has been STARTLINGLY bad against quarterbacks who excel when it matters most and have the bulk of the most important hardware to show for it during that time.

Stafford, Ryan, Romo and Cutler are regular season stat wonders who can't get their teams to the playoffs and elevate them while they're there. Flacco was a question mark, including the season when he lit up the playoffs after a meh regular season. He's pulled an Eli since and gone back to being a see saw.

I'd say these numbers are a big enough sample size to assert that the years elite QB's killed us is indeed a symptom that our D was bad, and it holds up over time, because we only have one year where that isn't true, and that's the year we won a title.

I'm not trying to pick a fight here, but we haven't stopped anyone consistently other than the year we won the whole shooting match, and it remains a problem. We can either stop the run but not the pass (wasn't that the year we surrended the second most passing yards ever in a season?), or like this year, we can be effective versus the pass but are trash against the run. Whatever our wrinkles are, they only befuddle middling talents, and yes, I put Cutler and his superlative physical abilities in that group because he's got a ten dollar brain on top of a billion dollar arm. We don't make great quarterbacks plain, and if you're going to win titles, that's what it takes (case in point the Seahawks last season vs. one of the greatest single seasons by a QB ever in Peyton).

It's not that we don't have some amazing ingredients. We just don't put it together the way some other teams do. Dom hasn't shown the ingenuity and flexibility that Todd Bowles has in Arizona this season. That's a fact, and it's sad because I don't know how many defensive minds out there know the game better than Dom. He just seems to lose his sparkle within two-three years. He's no **** Lebeau on that front...

 

[Deleted member 6794]

I took at look at the league opponents passer stats vs. playoff teams from 2011-13 (as I don´t know which teams will make the playoffs this season I didn´t include this year´s stats), expecting to find out the Packers are one of the worst teams in the league over that period. Surprisingly, the Packers defense has performed better than I thought they have, mainly because great QBs play pretty well vs. other teams as well.

Here´s what I found out. Stats vs. QBs whose teams made the playoffs in that season:

The Packers rank 13th in the league in opponents passer rating at 92.2. Only three teams in the league hold those QBs to a rating of under 80 with the Niners leading the way with a 76.7 rating. In addition the Packers rank 12th in opponents completion percentage, are tied for 16th in TDs allowed (being tied for 27th games played vs. playoff teams) and are tied in 3rd for interceptions (most in average per game).

Most importantly though we complain a lot about not being able to beat playoff teams. Well, guess those teams become playoff teams because they don´t lose a lot of games. Actually the Packers possess the league´s 2nd best record vs. playoff teams over the last three seasons at 8-7.