12-29-2008, 04:44 PM
Evan Wrote:most overrated: the defense. "top 5 in the league" on paper doesnt mean much when the D cant make critical stops in the 4th quarter, cant create turnovers, and cant put pressure on the qb.
The defense wasn't really the problem this year, it was the ineptitude of the offense as a whole. The D was 4th in YPG, 6th in PPG (1-5 and 7,9,11,12 and 13 all made the playoffs). Apart from a couple of meltdowns (yesterday included) the defense was actually pretty good.
It was our inability to score that killed us and if you look at the season trend its pretty obvious. In the first 8 games they scored 20.6 PPG, while scoring over 20 five times (all wins). In the second half they only managed 12.5 PPG and only reached 20 twice.
The two major issues to me were 1) The lack of a downfield threat; if we never go more than 15 yards downfield teams don't have to defend against it which hurts our intermediate passing game and 2) we should be using a two back system, it works so well for so many teams and giving Betts as few as 6-8 carries a game is a great change of pace and would help keep Portis healthy through the entire season.