The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

I've been seeing a lot of posts to the effect of, "It's a passing league"  "The new rules are designed for offense"  and most importantly, "Defense wins championships is a thing of the past"

If that's the case, then how come three of the four teams that are still playing are known for their defenses?

Discuss

Giants offense is a big play-pass happy offense. That team has a better offensive unit than defensive.

SF got 3 gift turnovers inside the 10 yard line giving them 3 scores and still needed to comeback to win. Plus their defense got lit up by NO and it was SF's offense that came through and won that game, not the defense

I think its more you won't be as successful with a great defense and an average offense.  Contrarily you will be more succesful if you have a powerful passing offense and an average defense.  If you look at NO, NE, and GB they are high winning percentage teams that also give up alot of yardage on defense.  Upsets are always possible though, and seem to be happening alot in this years playoffs.

The Saints-Niners game was a defensive battle until the final three minutes of the fourth quarter.  And I don't see the Giants offense as big play and pass happy.  You're talking about Green Bay or New England there.  I see the Giants as having the most balanced attack of the four teams left.

You do realize that the Giants were 8th in the NFL in Total Offense this year and 27th in Team Defense. And 25th in scoring defense

That is an offensive team through and through

Scoring defense?  What was their rank in total defense?  That defense shut down one of the top offenses in the league today.

I just gave you the stats. 27th in Total defense 25th in Scoring defense. That's not good! Only 7 teams in the entire league gave up more points.  And the Total Defense stat sucks too. But they are 8th in total offense. That is a pretty clear gap of what kind of team they are.

Yeah they had a good game today on defense. 1 good game. It's just 1 good game, that doesn't make them a team known for their defense!

All stats not guaranteed accurate,stats cherry pickedfrom Profootballreference.com,I'm up past my bedtime,prone to make mistakes,and my eyes are crossing.

I've always thought these type of statements are half truths...."Defense wins championships"
(http://filesmelt.com/dl/Superbowldefense.png)

*for entertainment purposes only... :D none of this means shit  :D

thanks for the work. That only takes the final 2 teams of the year into account and not all the playoff teams in a given year, but its good to show how back in the 90's it was a defensive league where the top defense always won and now since 2006 its pretty much been offense offense offense. There will always be exceptions here or there but that's the trend.

Which does line up about right with all of the rule changes and the "enforcement" of the rules and how they are called. The bottom line is it's a league where if you can't sling it and put up points when needed you can't win. For as much as SF is a defensive team, their defense got lit up and it was Alex Smith, Vernon Davis, and the offense that won them that game this week.

That's because you only got half of the statement. The whole statement is:

"Defense wins championships...as long as it's the 49ers defense."


;)

Say what you want, but I can't remember a D hitting as hard as the 49ers were this weekend. Every play it looked like they were going to kill someone. If the Ravens and Niners end up in the SB, I envision several ambulances driving onto the field to pick up players, a la Techmo Bowl. -EK

How ironic would it be to see the Harbaugh brothers battle it out for the Lombardi trophy?  That's what I'm actually hoping for.  A football game doesn't have to be a 41-38 contest to have value.  A smash mouth, grind it out, 14-10 defensive battle where teams are clawing away at each other for yards and first downs is great football, IMO.

Yeah that was called the BCS National Title game and it put people to sleep...lol

I agree, I don't need 41-38 for it to be a great game. But for a 14-10 game to keep peoples attention it needs to be at a high level and not just boring run and punt football.

I'm pretty sure it was the defense/special teams that caused all those turnovers. I wouldn't exactly call them gifts. The first turnover I saw the guy was out on his feet from a ferocious hit. The 2nd turnover I saw was just plain ol' good coverage.

Why is it that only QB's can make plays in this league? I'll say it again, they get FAR too much credit when the team wins and FAR too much blame when the team loses.

Which gives way to the endless media debate of who is/not an elite QB. IMO the rule changes are killing the NFL. You don't need a dominant defense anynore. Just one capable of making key stops. As opposed to not needing a dominant offense. But needing to make key plays.

On the other hand, 2 elite offenses with suspect defenses were knocked out of the playoffs this past weekend. To be fair, one elite defense was knocked out by a team with an elite offense and a suspect defense as well, so what is the common demoninator?

It's balance. The Giants and 49'ers have balance and they defeated teams with great offenses, but suspect defenses.  Denver has a good defense, but weak offense. Most people think that Pittsburgh (a team with more balance) would have given New England a better game.  Baltimore has more balance, I'm interested to see how that game turns out.

Looking at the teams that are left, it's the more complete teams that are left over the unbalanced teams 3-1.

In my opinion it was NEVER true that defense wins championships. All along it's been a combination of offense and defense that wins championships. You can have one or the other and do well, but you really need to be at least pretty good in both typically to win a championship.

LandsharkDamus

Manning threw for 296. Brady for 276. No defense in this game where each QB goes for essentially 300 yards. Giants had 396 total yards of offense. Pats 349

Two teams with terrible defenses played for it all and both showed their true colors tonight. They both played bad defenses and couldn't stop the opposing QB. The Pats offense stopped itself with a bunch of bad drops, lets be honest.

^^ Oh please. 21 to 17? 300 yards USED to mean something, it doesn't anymore. Now if you don't get 400 yards passing you were only average.

If Defense matters why weren't SF and Baltimore playing today?????  I mean seriously, these are 2 bad defensive teams who played bad defense today.

You don't win with defense in this league. I think the Giants, Pats, and Packers are proving that.  Giants 28th ranked defense, and if Wes Welker doesn't drop a wide open pass they let Brady win a ring. The Giants defense was bad and was bailed out by a bunch of Pats drops late

Sometimes, not all the time, sometimes it just seems like people want to argue with Mike. He's right btw. Those drops were killer. And if 300 is average... wow.   

teams used to be built to win the super bowl around running the ball and stopping the run.

it has changed to passing the ball and stopping the pass. in today's nfl, in order to contend for a super bowl you need a top tier qb, and multiple pass rushers to build the team around.

Tom Brady and the entire New England offense got their asses shut down tonight.  17 points.  Nuff said.

Tom Brady broke an NFL record with 16 straight completions at one point. The Giants couldn't shut them down, the Pats dropped a bunch of passes and those unforced errors cost them. The Giants didn't stop them the Pats stopped themselves

It was the 27th rated defense vs the 31st rated defense and it showed, in that game. Neither team can make a play on defense to save their life. Giants got bailed out late by key drops

The Giants defense is better than their ranking and way better than people give them credit for.  They shut down both Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers on the road to the Super Bowl.

The Pats offense is not so hot against a good defense.  The Ravens proved that in the AFC Title game.

Gotta give some credit to the Giants' Special Teams, they pinned the Patsies deep a couple times.

SF wasn't playing because New York's D played pretty damn well against SF too. Baltimore wasn't playing because there offense wasn't playing as good as New Englands.

Not every game, no. But you can win some. Just like with a great offense.

The Giants have a good D. It didn't show in the year totals because they had a ton of guys hurt earlier in the year, but it picked up late in the year and was much better. Welker didn't drop it, Brady missed him and forced him to try to make an acrobatic catch, which Welker normally makes, but he didn't. So the coverage wasn't that great on that one throw, there were a number of other contested throws to WR's. How about the batted balls on the line of scrimmage? You forget about those? How about the couple of sacks on Brady? Even when he wasn't getting sacked, he was pressured a LOT (hello safety?) and forced to move around a lot, much moreso than he normally does. You don't stop the Patriots and Brady, you slow them down and the Giants did that. Very few teams were able to do that this year to the Patriots. You could tell that the Giants were a lot more worried about Welker and Gronkowski and were taking those guys away, but when you do that, some other guys are gonna be open and Brady hit those guys for the most part, but Welker and Gronkowski didn't hurt them, which is what the Giants were trying to do.