FanPost

It's the offense, stupid!





Simple as that in my eyes. The defense could be better, sure, and there are things about it that I want addressed ASAP. But let's not kid ourselves--if our offense sucks not even that much less, we're legit championship contenders. What the answer is as far as how to make that happen is what we all should be discussing. But that's not the point of this fanpost. Basically I'm just a little sick of complaints about the defense.

They're an easy target after the previous loss. After we got Tebowed at the expense of inarguably our worst defensive starter, it's easy to hate on the defense. But seriously... The defense gave up 3 points through 54 minutes of that game. The offense spotted them a touchdown earlier. The defense wouldn't have even been in the position they were in if not for that massively stupid play. That's been a recurring theme the past couple of weeks, hasn't it. "But 95 yards at the end of the game to Timmy Tebow! So unclutch!!!" Well, if you put your defense in the position where they have to keep the opposing offense from scoring a TD at the end of a game, two things happen--one, your defense has to get conservative so as to not give up the big play, which makes it easy to drive up the field; and two, it's the end of the game, players are tired and thus are more prone to errors or just not doing their job as well as they should. If the offense doesn't stink the whole joint up the whole game, they don't put the defense in that position. I honestly can't remember the last time our defense truly lost us a game where our offense did enough to win.

That brings me to another point. You know... Every elite team has an offense that can bail its defense out when necessary. Not just this year, but throughout NFL history. The old adage that defense wins championships... In my opinion it's mostly BS, or at the very least it's only true if your offense is worth a damn. I can only think of one team with a crappy offense that ever won a Super Bowl, and that's the 2000 Ravens. So basically if you're going to win a Super Bowl with just defense, it had better be historically good. Our defense is easily in the top 3 this year along with the Ravens and 49ers. The Steelers ain't far behind either. Everyone considers those three Super Bowl contenders. All of them have offenses that while they aren't world-beating (exception being the Steelers, whose offense might be better than their defense which is scary), they've proven that they can put up enough on good teams to win.

Meanwhile we're spotting teams at least a touchdown a game nowadays, and I still hear people talking about problems on defense. Nobody has a perfect defense man. Yes, Eric Smith sucks and we have no consistent pass rush. Guess what? The defense is still top 3. Hell it's probably only 2nd to the Ravens'. If you consider all the bad field position and time of possession and all that, they might be the best overall. Meanwhile the offense nets 9 points against a bad, bad Patriots defense and 6 against an improving but still not impressive Denver defense.

So just remember when you want to bitch about the defense... It's the offense, stupid.

This is a FanPost written by a registered member of this site. The views expressed here are those of the author alone and not those of anybody affiliated with Gang Green Nation or SB Nation.