Lets go over this again....

rlemieux said
Reggie had a key fumble in the Caronlina game.

Turnovers are the key contributer to every game we have lost this year. You can't keep the ball in the other teams hands and expect a defense to just keep holding out.

The thing is the defense has not been doing their part and forcing turnovers - we are 31st in the league in that department. Ouch. So when our offense turns the ball over it makes it look even worse than when say, Dallas does it because the D wont' force turnovers themselves. We are not really *that* bad in the turnover department. But when we do turn the ball over we lose more often than not because our D can't force the other team to turn the ball over and take momentum back.

Like I said, this defense can control games, it just can't win them. They are going to give up some big plays, its just the nature of the defense, but the offense has to limit those plays by controlling the ball, scoring points in the redzone, and not making stupid errors like they have in all our our losses this season....

This defense has many holes, however the play smart and hard and that makes up for a lot.

This all true, and I have been impressed by the job that Gibbs has done with the D. I don't even blame them for the Cinci loss. They did a remarkable job bur our offense couldn't score. But make no mistake this D is not Super Bowl calibre. I wouldn't hestitate to put 90% of our effort next year on defense. That means every single first day pick I woud spend on D, and our free agent push shoudl be in that direction as well. . We have some holes on offense (namely, lack of good TE and mediocre run blocking), but our offense can mostly get the job done.