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<blockquote data-quote="Magooch" data-source="post: 1078129" data-attributes="member: 17987"><p>If your takeaway from all of that was "he's saying the Browns have an awful defense," then either I have SERIOUSLY miscommunicated my point or you have interpreted that post in a way that I would have never predicted, to say the least...</p><p>I'm not saying they have an awful defense (and I don't think that was implied, either, but to each their own) nor am I looking at only the Baltimore matchup. I'm saying that after struggling to score against the Browns, it seemed many were more than eager to absolve our offense of any blame because Cleveland's defense is elite and they're going to be a tough matchup for everyone they face and this and that. But it's like I said: in nine games this year, *only* the Dolphins have managed to put less points on the board against Cleveland than we did. For a team with Super Bowl aspirations and is said to be coached by an offensive mastermind, that is nowhere near good enough. In short, it's not an indictment against the Browns defense - it's an indictment of our own performances. In fact, I do think the Browns have a great defense. But to this point plenty of other teams who "should be" worse than us on paper have had an easier time against that elite defense than our offensive-mastermind's attack was able to muster. </p><p></p><p>The same is true for Carolina. In 10 games, only one team put less points on the board against them than we managed. And this is NOT an elite defense like Cleveland - Carolina is 23rd in defensive EPA/play...and 26th in offensive EPA/play. Maybe it will shake out differently by the end of the season, but right now they are not a great team who has a misleading record. If anything, they are closer to a below-average/bottom-third team who has an average record. It's fine and dandy to get in a lot of "we almost scored" situations, but the fact of the matter is that 8 other teams managed to produce more "we actually scored" situations against them, too.</p><p></p><p>And so my point is ultimately that it feels like we're trying to have our cake and eat it too. We want to talk about ourselves as being an elite team who's among the best in the league while also just being stymied by running into some great opponents, and it's okay because any team would struggle against opponents of this caliber. Except that's not true. Other teams *haven't* struggled against these teams to the degree that we did offensively. And it seems after every loss or bad performance there is a laundry list of explanations for why things went down that way and every team who performs well against us apparently makes a sudden transformation into a juggernaut just for Packers week and then reverts back to an average team for the other 8+ weeks of the season thus far. Just like there are many who are FAR too eager to jump at every possible criticism of this Packers team, it seems like there is an equal number who are reflexively just as eager to deflect any of these criticisms and provide excuse after excuse for why these performances weren't ACTUALLY that bad. </p><p></p><p>So the very short version: It's not about Cleveland having a bad defense (they don't), it's not about Carolina being a bad team (but they are closer to bad than good), it's not about Arizona being underrated (but they're not), and so on. At the end of the day, none of these are great teams, and I think just about everyone would agree on that. Rather than come up with a thousand explanations, for me it's a case of Occam's razor and the simplest (and IMO most likely) solution is that we played poorly against mediocre opposition and were punished for it. I am not interested in hyping up my opponent after a loss.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Magooch, post: 1078129, member: 17987"] If your takeaway from all of that was "he's saying the Browns have an awful defense," then either I have SERIOUSLY miscommunicated my point or you have interpreted that post in a way that I would have never predicted, to say the least... I'm not saying they have an awful defense (and I don't think that was implied, either, but to each their own) nor am I looking at only the Baltimore matchup. I'm saying that after struggling to score against the Browns, it seemed many were more than eager to absolve our offense of any blame because Cleveland's defense is elite and they're going to be a tough matchup for everyone they face and this and that. But it's like I said: in nine games this year, *only* the Dolphins have managed to put less points on the board against Cleveland than we did. For a team with Super Bowl aspirations and is said to be coached by an offensive mastermind, that is nowhere near good enough. In short, it's not an indictment against the Browns defense - it's an indictment of our own performances. In fact, I do think the Browns have a great defense. But to this point plenty of other teams who "should be" worse than us on paper have had an easier time against that elite defense than our offensive-mastermind's attack was able to muster. The same is true for Carolina. In 10 games, only one team put less points on the board against them than we managed. And this is NOT an elite defense like Cleveland - Carolina is 23rd in defensive EPA/play...and 26th in offensive EPA/play. Maybe it will shake out differently by the end of the season, but right now they are not a great team who has a misleading record. If anything, they are closer to a below-average/bottom-third team who has an average record. It's fine and dandy to get in a lot of "we almost scored" situations, but the fact of the matter is that 8 other teams managed to produce more "we actually scored" situations against them, too. And so my point is ultimately that it feels like we're trying to have our cake and eat it too. We want to talk about ourselves as being an elite team who's among the best in the league while also just being stymied by running into some great opponents, and it's okay because any team would struggle against opponents of this caliber. Except that's not true. Other teams *haven't* struggled against these teams to the degree that we did offensively. And it seems after every loss or bad performance there is a laundry list of explanations for why things went down that way and every team who performs well against us apparently makes a sudden transformation into a juggernaut just for Packers week and then reverts back to an average team for the other 8+ weeks of the season thus far. Just like there are many who are FAR too eager to jump at every possible criticism of this Packers team, it seems like there is an equal number who are reflexively just as eager to deflect any of these criticisms and provide excuse after excuse for why these performances weren't ACTUALLY that bad. So the very short version: It's not about Cleveland having a bad defense (they don't), it's not about Carolina being a bad team (but they are closer to bad than good), it's not about Arizona being underrated (but they're not), and so on. At the end of the day, none of these are great teams, and I think just about everyone would agree on that. Rather than come up with a thousand explanations, for me it's a case of Occam's razor and the simplest (and IMO most likely) solution is that we played poorly against mediocre opposition and were punished for it. I am not interested in hyping up my opponent after a loss. [/QUOTE]
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