Once again, this week's championship games prove that in the current era....offense is king.

The top two QB's and their top offenses are going to the Super Bowl. The top defense is going home. Will the Dolphins finally learn something about the modern passing game and draft or acquire a top WR??? Doubtful....but there is always hope. Defense is important, but it only rarely wins championships....and when it does, it probably features one of the top 10 defenses of all NFL history.

Then the catch when he never had clomplete possesion of the ball and it hit the ground. I have no problem with the Saints goin instead of the Vikes but i hate to see it come down to a few calls by the refs

When looking at defense, you can't just look at yards allowed. Turnovers caused and points allowed are important stats also.

If you lead the league in fewest yards allowed but don't cause too many turnovers, you're not really the top defense.

That's true, though I heard somebody say over the weekend that forcing a 3-and-out is as good as a turnover. Thought that was interesting.

That defense had the Jets up by 10 until Peyton decided to stand in there and take a few in the chops. The Saints also put so many hits on Favre he wasn't the same QB by the 3rd quarter. I noticed several balls he threw early and missed his target in the 2nd half. Those INTs were a direct result of not wanting to take another blast.

Once again?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't both the 2008-09 Steelers and 2007-08 Giants have great defenses?

both of those teams had good offenses which makes a defense better

So having a defense that gets the opposing offense off the field and gives the ball back to the offense doesn't make an offense better?

It only works as a one way street?

it might, but I really believe it works more the other way. The Ravens superbowl team is one of the best defenses I have seen in a long time and Dilfers offense was god awful to watch.

Once again?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't both the 2008-09 Steelers and 2007-08 Giants have great defenses?

I can't give you the numbers right off the top of my head, but I believe a top rated offense always beats a top rated defense 89% of the time.

As opposed to beating them sometimes 89% of the time?

Ok then... lets go over the last 10 superbowls just for fun here...

Steelers vs. Cardinals (defense)
Giants vs. Patriots (defense)
Colts vs. Bears (offense, defense picked it up huge in the playoffs)
Seahawks vs. Steelers (defense)
Patriots vs. Eagles (offense)
Patriots vs. Panthers (offense)
Raiders vs. Bucs (defense) *looking at these teams now... this superbowl would be embarassing lol*
Patriots vs. Rams (defense, held the Rams high flying offense to 17 pts)
Ravens vs. Giants (defense, arguably one of the best defenses ever)
Rams vs. Titans (offense, although a low scoring game at 23-16)

6 out of the 10 go to the defense... some of the offensive ones are even questionable...

I think this list is more up for debate than just this is offense this one is defense. I see two clear cut defensive wins and 4 offensive wins.

We're not talking about defensive wins. We're talking about having a stout defense for the entire season. In this context one could easily argue that the Pats, in the years v Eagles and Panthers, relied heavily on defense. It wasn't until they had the Brady-Moss-Welker trio that they became a high flying offensive juggernaut (and they haven't won a SB with them either). The 1 SB appearance they had since their offensive explosion they lost to a superior defense.

It's tough to score a lot of points. It's not as tough to keep teams from scoring a lot of points.

I saw this show on the NFL Network once called The Top 10 Football Myths. I didn't remember the list, but I found it on another forum:

10. Tackle stats are not accurate
9. QB's need a rocket arm to be successful
8. Teams should punt on 4th down
7. Turnovers matter
6. You need to run to set up the pass
5. Icing the kicker works
4. Dome teams are soft
3. Defense wins championships
2. It is next to impossible to repeat as champions
1. The prevent defense does not work

Unrelated to topic, regarding #8: In my opinion, the first coach that comes in the NFL and rarely punts is going to revolutionize the pro game.

Yeah he's gonna revolutionize himself out of a job.

This is the philosophy that got us 0 playoff wins for a decade.

Does defense win championships?
Well, of course. And so does offense. But the conventional wisdom that "defense wins championships" implies that defense is particularly more important than offense in the playoffs and the Super Bowl. This post will begin to look at whether defense really does matter more than offense in the NFL by comparing the right tails of the performance distributions of offenses and defenses--where playoff teams come from.

This time of year we are helped to the standard slew of articles declaring that defense is more important. Here is the latest example from ESPN.com. It's a good example because it suffers from some fatal flaws (itemized by Phil Birnbaum here). Typically, these articles look at past examples of NFL champions and comparing the offensive and defensive rankings of each team. I don't think this kind of analysis is necessarily very valid--


•They are anecdotal
•The sample size is usually very small, and results are probably not statistically significant--just due to chance

•If the sample size is large, it covers very distinct periods of NFL passing and blocking rules, confounding any results

•If the sample size is limited to one period of NFL rules, it can be dominated by one or two particular teams would skew the results (PIT in the 70s or NE currently, for example)
•Often, the analysis shows that defense is indeed important, but not more important than offense
•The rankings of each squad is almost always based on points scored or total yards, which are more often than not deceiving about the true performance of a squad

................

This means that great offenses tend to be "better" than great defenses, and terrible offenses tend to be "worse" than terrible defenses.

.....

So if a great offense usually trumps a great defense, where does the perception that "defense wins championships" come from? Truly dominant defenses such as the 2000 Ravens, 2002 Buccaneers, or 1985 Bears are relatively rare, and are therefore more memorable. Also, defense has traditionally been overlooked, at least by the mainstream hype-laden media. Even football insiders seem to focus on offense, demonstrated by who is inducted in the Hall of Fame, or who the MVPs tend to be. So the phrase "defense wins championships" may really mean "defense helps win championships more than most people think they do."

...........

So when looking at the NFL as a whole, offense and defense balances symmetrically. But when focusing on the right tails of performance, where playoff teams come from, we see that great offenses out-pace equally great defenses.

Jan 14, 2008
Run Defense Dominates in the Playoffs

In the last post I indirectly analyzed playoff games by looking at regular season games that only featured opponents who both went on to win at least 10 games. We saw that teams with the better running games actually won less than 50% of the time.

In this post, I'll look at actual playoff games directly. Compared with the 114 "good vs. good" regular season games I looked at yesterday, there were 50 playoff games, plus 5 Super Bowls, in the 2002 through 2006 seasons.

The table below lists the winning percentage of the team with the superior season-long performance in each stat. In other words, the team with the better [stat] won [x] percent of the time. The regular season good vs. good match-ups are also listed for comparison. (The home win percentage excludes the five Super Bowls during the period.)




Stat Good vs Good Playoffs




Home 59.6 64.0

O Run 45.6 45.5

D Run** 48.2 67.3

O Pass* 52.6 63.6

D Pass 51.8 56.3

O Int Rate 50.9 58.1

D Int Rate 55.3 58.1

O Fum Rate** 55.3 40.0

D FFum Rate 54.4 54.5

Pen Rate 47.3 52.7




** = good vs. good / playoff difference is significant at the p=0.05 level
* = good vs. good / playoff difference is significant at the p=0.10 level

The home team won more often in the playoffs than in good vs good regular season match-ups, which is expected because higher seeded teams host the playoff games.

The team with the better run efficiency won only 45.5% of the 55 playoff games during the '02-'06 period. Keep in mind the small sample size could make these results misleading. 45.5% is only 2.5 games below 50%. But the result echoes the same result for the regular season good vs. good match-ups.

Defensive run efficiency is a different story. Although the team with superior run stopping ability won only 48.7% of the regular season good vs. good match-ups, it won 67.3% of playoff games. This is a striking difference to say the least, especially considering how unimportant run defense is based on regression models of regular season games.

The passing game stands out as well. Both offensive and defensive passing stats appear to be more important in the playoffs. Interception rates also appear very important.

Another striking result is that of offensive fumble rates. The team with the lower fumble rate wins only 40% of playoff games. As one of the more random stats, it's not too surprising to see a spurious result for fumble rate, but 40% is fairly low, even for such a small sample size.

I suspect that coaches may become too conservative in the playoffs, relying on the run. This might explain why having a good running game doesn't help teams win and why the ability to stop the run suddenly becomes very important in the playoffs.

My own gut feeling is that coaches don't coach to win. They coach to avoid a loss. It sounds inane, but there is a difference. Maybe the play-calling in the playoffs becomes even more timid. But then again, perhaps the January weather has something to do with it. Previous research has established the importance of climate, especially when dome teams play outdoors. Weather may explain the 67% win percentage of teams with the better run defense. Defense may win championships after all, particularly run defense.

This is the philosophy that got us 0 playoff wins for a decade.