Some Misc. Stats to consider (1 Viewer)

do you see the saints switching to such a defense? is it something gibbs has experience with? im not opposed, but i just dont see it happening...

personally, i wish we had the athletes to go to an old skool 46...
buddy ball baby!!!

I would be quite happy with such a switch. I think that the Saints high risk/high reward offense needs to be teamed up with a similar defense.

Putting pressure on both sides of the ball is necessary when the athletes are equal in talent and the coaching is nearly equal as well.

I don't think that anybody in the Saints organization has the grapes to try such a thing.
 
based on the stats I've posted, the conclusion that I have come up with is the teams that limit the opposing teams QB passer rating, give up few big passing plays, and cause/create interceptions have been the most successful W/L wise. Now, I know none of that is groundbreaking at all, but I think it's easier to see what works in the NFL today. It used to be all about stopping the run, and to some extent is still is, but with the emphasis on passing the league now, it appears that stopping the pass is more important.


I think your statistics are very, very significant. For one thing, they show that good defense leads to playoffs. For another, they show that giving up big plays leads to disaster. And they suggest that "bend but don't break" is not such a bad defensive strategy. The Saints' defense should have an advantage in one way: thay have to practice against an excellent passing offense. I wonder how many times the CB's got burned by Colston and Patten in practice. :hmmm:
 
do you see the saints switching to such a defense? is it something gibbs has experience with? im not opposed, but i just dont see it happening...

personally, i wish we had the athletes to go to an old skool 46...
buddy ball baby!!!

I would think he does, and I would think he's well-versed in many schemes, Gibbs had a big hand in converting the Cowboys defense from the 4-3 to the 3-4 in 2005, to which the Cowboys' defense finished 10th overall in the NFL.
 
My kind of talk :hihi:

I think when you talk about defensive (and for that matter offensive) success, you want to key in on 3 factors.

1. 3rd down efficiency
2. redzone efficiency
3. turnover/big play ratio

I guess you can call it the "Holy Trinity" of efficiency. The significance of these stats is extremely straight forward.

If you are good at converting 3rd downs you will sustain drives and therefore, control the clock, always give yourself good field position, and get into the redzone. Then, of course, once in the redzone one has to convert it into points, ideally 7, at least 3.

Passing yards and rushing yards are relatively incidental to all of this. It doesn't matter how you convert 3rd downs, sustain drives, and then score, just that you do.

The last factor in all of this is your turnover-to-big play ratio. I guess the "homerun factor" would suffice. A turnover is significantly better then just a 3-and-out because, of course, you gain significant field position. Giving up a big play is much worse then just a 3rd down conversion for the same reason. I'm not going to dig out the stats the support this but I suspect keeping these in preportion is more important then strictly skewing away from giving up big offensive plays. In otherwords, it's ok to gamble on defense as long as you're getting as good as you're giving. While a "safer" defense may yield less points, a "gambling" defense would, despite giving up more points, yield better field position and score more points on its own, compensating.


The 2006 defense was not anywhere near as bad as the reputation it had. It was one of the better 3rd down defenses in the NFL, indeed producing the 2nd most 3-and-outs in the NFL. Even though the big plays allowed vs turnovers created was definantly skewed, preventing it from being an "elite" defense, it was a highly efficient defense, which is why we made it to the NFC Championship.

This years defense by contrast was significantly, significantly, worse on 3rd down. In my opinion the decline of our 3rd down defense was the single most important difference between the 2006 defense and the 2007 defense. The question then that has to be asked is why the significant decline?


A sharp decline in sacks could be part of the problem. We had a number of defensive line injuries this past season, Brian Young and Charles Grant principal among them. The complete absence of pressure on 3rd and long was too obvious at times.

A second factor was completion % against us. While the sharp increase in run defense should have produced more 3rd and longs (and therefore a lower efficiency on that down) we went from Top 5 in completion % allowed in 2006 to 20th worst.

We actually didn't give up anymore big plays then last year in the passing game and less in the run game. And produced more turnovers. The key problem was the defenses flat-out inability to get off the field as opposed to last year which resulted in low possession halves and an out-of-sync offense such as the first half against St. Louis.


Some anecdotal examples to consider

The Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants both gave up close to as many big pass plays as we did but significantly less points (18.8 pg for the Eagles, 21.9 for the Giants, 24.2 for us). Neither the Giants nor the Eagles produced more turnovers either (actually producing less) yielding a similiar ratio to us. Why the significantly better defenses?

The Eagles had the 7th best 3rd down defense in the NFL and the Giants the 5th best.

The anamoly in my, I don't know, "theory"? Are the Indianapolis Colts and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Colts had the 3rd worst 3rd down defense, the Bucs had a 3rd down defense as bad as ours. A consquence of the soft Tampa-2 philosophy. I haven't checked the stats but I would wager they compensate with a very, very favorable Turnover/BPA (big play allowed) ratio and a solid redzone defense (lots of field goals and turnovers, few TDs).


So what does all of this mean? To me, the core focus should be on improving our 3rd down defense, the significant factor in it's decline from last year being, in my opinion, the lack of a pass rush, particularly on 3rd and long situations routinely set up by an improved run defense.
 
Here are my stats on turnover ratio:


We have got to get better at it. This year, we ranked 24th in the NFL with a -7 turnover margin. We were 26th in takeaways and 14th in giveaways. We need more defensive playmakers to creat turnovers.

I did a little research to show how important turnovers are to winning. 8 of the top 10 teams in turnover ratio made the playoffs. The top 5 teams in TR had a combined regular season record of 59-21 while the bottom 5 had a combined record of 29-51.

In the NFC, 6 teams had a regular season record of 9-7 or better. Those teams had a combined TR of +20. The 10 teams that had 8-8 records or worse had a combined TR of -42.

In the AFC, 7 teams had a regular season record of 9-7 or better. Those teams had a combined TR of +67. The 9 teams that had 8-8 records or worse had a combined TR of -59.

You can say what you want about having a balanced offensive attack or about being able to stop the run, but if you can't win the turnover battle you likely won't win many games.

BTW, the team with the best TR during the playoffs is,,,,,,the New York Giants.
 
we have to bring pressure, hard to complete a long ball on your back or in a 3 step drop.
 
spam,
didnt we take a step in the right direction to do just this, this past year?
granted our 3rd down defense outright sucked, but we were significantly better on 1st and we were also better against the run. 3rd and 5 and longer is much tougher to convert. unfortunately we couldnt get off the field and again we gave up big play after big play, but we did improve against the run and on 1st downs.

my point is, if we are constantly facing 3rd and 1, the conversion percentage is going to be much greater than say 3rd and 5. i said 2 yrs ago, this would be a 3 yr thing. let us see what we can do now in our 3rd yr. we have the tools on offense and we have a few of the pieces on defense. we need to add a couple more (ok a lot more) and we need to scheme better...
my .02
 

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