I never undertood the use of yards as the main factor in determining the best defenses. A team could march 99 yards down field and still not get a single point.

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Bend don't break.

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Yep. Revisionist history. They played the teams on the schedule and, other than the Steelers and finally the Cardinals, they beat them all.

I'm not personally concerned with where the defense ranked - aside from the two losses they did what they're paid to do.

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haha ya thats right on the money - I was even worried about our last 1/2 of the season. Thinking about all these great teams we had to face.

balt, dallas, pit (sb defending champs), cards (nfc defending champs), bears again (always tough at home), 49ers looked tough at the beginning of the season ...

They still had to prepare for a game, no matter if it was against the worst offense or the best offense, they had to prepare and stop them, which they were able to do for majority of the season. Doesn't matter who they're playing.

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Nathanial & Twins - My point exactly. At the end of the day, who cares how many yards your opponent got? There's only one thing I care about - we got more points than they did.

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I don't agree with the Bucs point total as any measuring stick. They got one TD off an INT, one off a blocked punt, and brought back a couple of returns deep on our end of the field. The defense could have had a better game for sure but certainly can't be held accountable for the total and based on the points they actually did give up we should have won the game.

There's no mystery to what happened and what has to be done to improve. The 3-4 has to get pressure on the QB. Especially the better QB's they face. When we got pressure on Romo it was a W. When we didn't get it against the Vikes, Ben, or, Kurt, it was a loss.

There are simply to many holes in the zone and the QB has to be forced to get the ball out before the receivers make it to the spots.

Every game we gave up more than 30 you can look back and see we did not get to the QB so I think that tells you all you need to know.

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FACT is, against Pitts and the Cards (in the playoff game) our D was M.I.A.
They were AWFUL. Plain and simple.
If teams want to beat our D, watch those 2 game films, and we are sunk.
UNLESS they make some big changes for next year.

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If you look at those two games Ben and Kurt threw, threw, threw, and we just did not get pressure on them and they looked invincible. Both had their troubles in games where they were getting put on the ground.

I think it is extremely important that we find another rusher over Jones at that LB position. We need to squeeze the pocket and that will also give Mathews more shots too. If I am not mistaken I believe Baltimore's leading sacker is playing from that position and most really good 3-4's have a very good rushing defender in that spot.

I don't think either inside LB got the job done in either game you mention here either. When they go they have to get there and at least make the QB rush or throw with their feet moving or it's just going to end up badly.

This defense will just not work if the QB can stand back there at all. If that's the case we might as well rush four and man up. It's pretty simple really.

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In those 2 games, we had NO pressure on the opposing QB. The opposing QBs had too much time to find open receivers. That much time and no DB is going to be able to cover the guy he's supposed to be covering. Both QBs had six seconds all day long to find open receivers.

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