Defense--Packers and others

[Mr. WEO]

Last night in the shoutbox, the comment was made that the Packers' standing as the worst pass defense in league history is likely due the fact that "they build big leads early and teams have to pass more against them". Leaving aside the question of why a good defense would give up so many yards under any circumstances, is this premise true? Is the awful Pack pass D stat "misleading"?

 

Let's take a look. I have used halftime scores to see what leads GB took to the locker room that might cause teams to just toss the ball exclusively in the second have of the game.

 

Their average first half score is 18.4 points, vs. 9.8 for their opponents--esseintially one possession (TD+2).

 

Their greatest lead was 31-0 over Oak yet Palmer would only pass for 247 yards all game. Up 11 against the Vikes, Ponder would finish with only 190 yards. Up by 11 against Chicago, McKown would only have 242 yards.

 

Only agaisnt STL, where the Pack had a 21 point halftime lead, did the opposing QB (Bradford) throw for over 300.

 

In 5 games, they had a lead of 7 or less points at the half.

 

In 3 games, they were behind at the half.

 

Agaisnt the top passers in the league, they gave up a ton of yards. Brees (419), Newton (432), Ryan, Rivers (385), Manning (347), Stafford (520). Even Freeman (a top 15 passer) got 342.

 

 

So it seems that the Pack D didn't have huge leads early, and when they had double digit leads, it didn't lead to big passing games by the opposing QB (except STL). No, the Pack DD got destroyed by the best passing QBs in the league--this was unrelated to the size of the PAcker early lead.

 

Whcih leads to the following question--so what? If the best teams in the League (GB, NO, NE) are all content to have crappy defenses because they can score in bunches and simply outshoot their opponents, should the Bills be loading up on defense yet again, and neglect the offense?

 

Perhaps we can answer this better after the playoffs--when we can see the results of avg-to-anemic offense/strong D (SF, BAlt, Pitt) vs. these other three.

Edited January 3, 2012 by Mr. WEO