You can't judge a defense independently of the offense. Our offense this year puts a tremendous amount of pressure on our D to perform almost flawlessly. We need turnovers to help us win. Those Superbowl teams often staked our D to 3 score leads at halftime and forced opponents to become one dimensional.
This may sound crazy, but I'm not completely sold on our D this year. Our ferocious pass rush is certainly a nightmare match up for inexperienced and sub-par QB's -- Geno Smith, Vick, Bridgewater, Hoyer, etc, but looking at the schedule we haven't played a top-10 QB since Brady in Week 6 (no, I don't consider Tannehill or Alex Smith top-10). That last match up with NE was brutal -- they scored every time they had the ball in the 2nd half on long drives (3 of 80+ yds) and we looked helpless to stop them.
This is going to be a fascinating and (hopefully) exciting month of football, because we are going to find our if our D can stand up to the truly elite QBs.