Maddening Football Arguments

[Romberjo]

Originally posted by RedskinzOwnU

yes defense wins the championship game. If you've gotten to the championship game, that means you probably have a pretty capable offense, so defense is what will win the game for you. A decent offense is more of an assumption on the part of the speaker. Most teams don't have too much trouble putting together a serviceable offense, the redskins last year were an exception to that standard.

Please explain 1) why if you've gotten to the championship game you're more likely to have a pretty capable offense than a pretty capable defense, and 2) why it's easier to put together a serviceable offense than a serviceable defense, and 3) why, even assuming those things are true, that makes it true that defense wins championships.

Conceivably you're suggesting that the top offenses are not terribly different from each other, whereas there are truly great defenses that are much better than the rest of the league, so it's more likely that a great defense will be what distinguishes a championship team. That might make sense as an analytical proposition; I'm not an expert on such things, but as an empirical matter, I seriously doubt that's true.

Originally posted by CaliforniaSkin

I agree with most of your points. Teams that win tend to have a good balance of offense and defense. But defense is more important because a good defense tends to be much more consistent than a good offense, especially a passing offense. The Colts are a case in point. So are the Rams. They had by far the best offense in football for several years and managed only one championship out of it. Not coincidentally in the year their defense played well. (Either led the league or was damn close in takeaways).

That is also the reason for the 'you need run' idea. A good running game tends to be more consistent than a passing game. And usually less dependent on a single player. Tailbacks are easier to replace than QBs. Look at the Broncos, Chiefs, Vikings, etc... Priest Holmes has been by far the top producing RB over the last few years (when he's healthy), but when he goes down the Chiefs have inserted a backup and still run the ball extremely well. Does anyone believe that if Peyton were to go down the Colts wouldn't see a significant dropoff?

This is a more thoughtful defense of defense than most I've seen, but I'm still not buyin' it. Why should consistency win you championships? I'd think that consistency would make you the Eagles, or some other team that tends consistently to do very well but not quite well enough.

E.g., let's say there are four teams in the playoffs that consistently do very well, say 88-92 on a scale of 1-100, and four teams that are on average just as good, but are less consistent, ranging over time from 80-100 depending on, e.g., if Peyton Manning is injured. It would be more likely that one of the less consistent teams would win the Super Bowl (and also more likely that they would lose earlier in the playoffs), because they're more likely to be the single team that is the best (or the worst).

[dfitzo53]

Originally posted by Kevin B.

Good point but ...

Neither is looking at a YPC for a guy who basically played 1 game?

Of course not. I'm just saying that stating Portis had 1300 yards doesn't tell the whole story.

[zoony]

Originally posted by dfitzo53

How about the Patriots defense twice making Peyton Manning look silly?

There are plenty of NFL defenses who have made Manning looka silly, including the Redskins D the last time we played them.

How about being second in the league in points allowed and tied for third in takeaways?

How did our defense do last year compared to our record? Post the results... and maybe seeing it all laid out in front of you will help you to realize how fragile your argument is

Ask yourself, would the Patriots have been in 3 Superbowls, much less the championship games without that kind of play from the defense?

How'd their "defense" do against Carolina? Tell me about it when you get time.

I'm not saying the team could necessarily do well without Brady, I'm saying there are other crucial elements as well.

elements yes. crucial elements? probably not. Look at the franchise QBs around the league. Vick, Manning, Brady, McNabb, etc. Their respective teams will be in the playoffs this year.

Let me repeat. THEIR RESPECTIVE TEAMS WILL BE IN THE PLAYOFFS THIS YEAR.

You could have mickey mouse and donald duck as your cornerbacks, and santa claus as your middle linebacker. With Michael Vick as your QB, YOU WILL BE IN THE PLAYOFFS.

People make the NFL much more complicated than what it is. It is a quarterbacks league, plain and simple. Are there other factors? Well of course. But none that really matter.

[zoony]

Originally posted by iheartskins

The reality is that winning in the NFL can't be reduced to a single concept, coach, or entity (like defense, offense or special teams).

Well I'm reducing it.

Its the QB.

[iheartskins]

Originally posted by zoony

Well I'm reducing it.

Its the QB.

Having a good QB may be crucial to having a winning season. However, this does not mean that just by virtue of having a good QB that a team is assured to win all of the time.

[CaliforniaSkin]

Originally posted by Romberjo

This is a more thoughtful defense of defense than most I've seen, but I'm still not buyin' it. Why should consistency win you championships? I'd think that consistency would make you the Eagles, or some other team that tends consistently to do very well but not quite well enough.

E.g., let's say there are four teams in the playoffs that consistently do very well, say 88-92 on a scale of 1-100, and four teams that are on average just as good, but are less consistent, ranging over time from 80-100 depending on, e.g., if Peyton Manning is injured. It would be more likely that one of the less consistent teams would win the Super Bowl (and also more likely that they would lose earlier in the playoffs), because they're more likely to be the single team that is the best (or the worst).

Consistency gets you to the playoffs and gets you homefield advantage. It also lets you play well no matter the weather. Also if we're talking about a top defensive team, we're not talking about a team that plays consistently well. We're talking about a team that can dominate an opposing offense.

Lets look at your example. You need to play at least 3 games to win the Super Bowl. Say your inconsistent team was 10-6 or 11-5 which means it played 2 good games for each poor one. For it to win the SB it would need to play CONSISTENTLY at its peak for 3 or 4 games. Now this HAS happened. The '83 and arguably '80 raiders and the 2001 Patriots all won SBs without being the best teams in the league over the course of the year. But it doesn't happen often. Usually the team that wins the super bowl is at or near the top of the league in wins. You get that way by being consistently good.

I am not talking about 'inconsistency' when a top player is injured. If the Colts played 10 games with Peyton, for example and went 9-1 and then went 2-4 without him, I'd call them a very consistent team with him playing.

There are other reasons why 'defense wins championships' as well. Defense makes up for a mediocre offense by shortening the field for the offense. A big defensive play, most especially a turnover, changes the game more than a big offensive play.

Bringing up last year's Redskins team is not really valid. Yeah, we had a great defense but our offense was simply horrible. It was 30th out of 32 teams. No team is EVER going to win when one side of the ball is that bad. I don't care if you combined the best of the '76 steelers, '85 bears, 2000 ravens and 2003-4 Patriots, if you put a 30th ranked offense on the other side of the ball they wouldn't win.

But lets look simply at statistics. Here is every superbowl winner and their defensive and offensive ranks. The ranks are for scoring then yardage in parantheses. (I could not find yardage rankings prior to 1972)

year team def off

1966 Packers 1 4

1967 Packers 3 9

1968 Jets 4 2

1969 Chiefs 2 1

1970 Colts 7 6

1971 Cowboys 1 7

1972 Dolphins 1(1) 1(1)

1973 Dolphins 1(4) 5(16)

1974 Steelers 2(1) 6(8)

1975 Steelers 2(3) 5(6)

1976 Raiders 12(19) 4(2)

1977 Cowboys 2(1) 8(2)

1978 Steelers 1(3) 5(10)

1979 Steelers 5(2) 1(1)

1980 Raiders 10(13) 7(15)

1981 49ers 2(2) 7(14)

1982 Redskins 1(5) 12(6)

1983 Raiders 3(7) 13(4)

1984 49ers 2(4) 1(9)

1985 Bears 1(1) 2(6)

1986 Giants 2(4) 8(9)

1987 Redskins 6(22) 4(3)

1988 49ers 7(3) 8(3)

1989 49ers 3(4) 1(1)

1990 Giants 1(2) 15(19)

1991 Redskins 1(4) 2(3)

1992 Cowboys 5(1) 2(4)

1993 Cowboys 2(8) 2(4)

1994 49ers 1(1) 6(9)

1995 Cowboys 3(7) 3(8)

1996 Packers 1(1) 1(5)

1997 Broncos 6(4) 1(1)

1998 Broncos 8(12) 2(3)

1999 Rams 7(3) 1(1)

2000 Ravens 1(1) 14(16)

2001 Patriots 6(24) 6(19)

2002 Bucaneers 1(1) 18(24)

2003 Patriots 1(7) 12(18)

2004 Patriots 2(9) 4(7)

Most teams are balanced. They usually have both a good defense and good offense. The average ranking for scoring defense was 3.2, for scoring offense was 5.3. Obviously the 'average' SB winner had a very good offensive and defensive team.

But just once in 39 years did a team not in the top ten in defense win a SB. A team without a top ten offense won 6 times. In fact only 8 times did the SB winner not have a top 5 defense compared to 16 SB winning teams without top 5 offenses.

The top (scoring) defense in the league won 14 out of 39 Super Bowls. 8 times the number 2 defense won. Compare that to the number 1 offense winning 8 times and the number 2 6 times. Number 3 defense won 4 times and number 3 offense won once. So top 26 of the 39 SB winners had top 3 defenses compared 15 top 3 offenses.

Add it all up and the conclusions are obvious. Defense DOES win championships. Now that is not a hard and fast rule. There are exceptions (most notably the Raiders) but as a generality it is valid. But when people say defense wins championships they DON'T mean that defense can do it without any offense, just that defense is the key to winning it all.

[IowaSkin]

Another "Madden"-ing football argument:

"The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break." - John Madden

Not certain if that's a good policy in today's NFL, but he does have the best winning percentage ever...

[jrockster21]

Originally posted by whitejimmy

I thought I'd throw my short list out there and invite others to chime in. I think it'll help provoke even more enlightened debates on this board, which are already very good.

1. The belief that running the ball will dictate more wins. Every clown analyst loves to throw this one in during the first part of a telecast. “As you’ll see from our stats, when X team runs the ball more than Y times, they win every game.” There is a cause and effect logic error to this argument that apparently is hard for them to comprehend. It’s because the team is winning that they CAN run the ball more to kill the clock. It’s not necessarily a CAUSAL relationship between running the ball and winning.

While its true that when a team is winning, they tend to accumulate more rushing yards and TOP in order to kill the clock, that is not always the reason why they have a lot of rushing yards. For proof, just examine last year's stats; The Skins were 12th in the league in rushing attempts. According to your logic, they should have been winning a lot more games, right?

Kansas City was 7th in the league in attempts and 5th in yards/game; but their record was only one game better than ours. Baltimore, Buffalo, Houston and Arizona all had more attempts/game than the Skins did, and none of them made the playoffs.

[jrockster21]

Originally posted by zoony

How'd their "defense" do against Carolina? Tell me about it when you get time.

They held them to 3 less points than the Patriot offense

[jrockster21]

Originally posted by CaliforniaSkin

Bringing up last year's Redskins team is not really valid. Yeah, we had a great defense but our offense was simply horrible. It was 30th out of 32 teams. No team is EVER going to win when one side of the ball is that bad. I don't care if you combined the best of the '76 steelers, '85 bears, 2000 ravens and 2003-4 Patriots, if you put a 30th ranked offense on the other side of the ball they wouldn't win.

Excellent point; a 30th ranked offense does NOT get it done. Its very silly to base the "defense does not win championships" argument on the 2004 skins.

But lets look simply at statistics. Here is every superbowl winner and their defensive and offensive ranks. The ranks are for scoring then yardage in parantheses. (I could not find yardage rankings prior to 1972)

year team def off

1966 Packers 1 4

1967 Packers 3 9

1968 Jets 4 2

1969 Chiefs 2 1

1970 Colts 7 6

1971 Cowboys 1 7

1972 Dolphins 1(1) 1(1)

1973 Dolphins 1(4) 5(16)

1974 Steelers 2(1) 6(8)

1975 Steelers 2(3) 5(6)

1976 Raiders 12(19) 4(2)

1977 Cowboys 2(1) 8(2)

1978 Steelers 1(3) 5(10)

1979 Steelers 5(2) 1(1)

1980 Raiders 10(13) 7(15)

1981 49ers 2(2) 7(14)

1982 Redskins 1(5) 12(6)

1983 Raiders 3(7) 13(4)

1984 49ers 2(4) 1(9)

1985 Bears 1(1) 2(6)

1986 Giants 2(4) 8(9)

1987 Redskins 6(22) 4(3)

1988 49ers 7(3) 8(3)

1989 49ers 3(4) 1(1)

1990 Giants 1(2) 15(19)

1991 Redskins 1(4) 2(3)

1992 Cowboys 5(1) 2(4)

1993 Cowboys 2(8) 2(4)

1994 49ers 1(1) 6(9)

1995 Cowboys 3(7) 3(8)

1996 Packers 1(1) 1(5)

1997 Broncos 6(4) 1(1)

1998 Broncos 8(12) 2(3)

1999 Rams 7(3) 1(1)

2000 Ravens 1(1) 14(16)

2001 Patriots 6(24) 6(19)

2002 Bucaneers 1(1) 18(24)

2003 Patriots 1(7) 12(18)

2004 Patriots 2(9) 4(7)

Most teams are balanced. They usually have both a good defense and good offense. The average ranking for scoring defense was 3.2, for scoring offense was 5.3. Obviously the 'average' SB winner had a very good offensive and defensive team.

But just once in 39 years did a team not in the top ten in defense win a SB. A team without a top ten offense won 6 times. In fact only 8 times did the SB winner not have a top 5 defense compared to 16 SB winning teams without top 5 offenses.

The top (scoring) defense in the league won 14 out of 39 Super Bowls. 8 times the number 2 defense won. Compare that to the number 1 offense winning 8 times and the number 2 6 times. Number 3 defense won 4 times and number 3 offense won once. So top 26 of the 39 SB winners had top 3 defenses compared 15 top 3 offenses.

Add it all up and the conclusions are obvious. Defense DOES win championships. Now that is not a hard and fast rule. There are exceptions (most notably the Raiders) but as a generality it is valid. But when people say defense wins championships they DON'T mean that defense can do it without any offense, just that defense is the key to winning it all.

Awesome stats; I bet if you found the same stats for the losing superbowl team, more often than not they would have a lower defensive ranking and a higher offensive ranking than the winner. Just a guess though....