Its time...

Wrong. This league is a defense driven league and always has been. Much like any other sport, defense wins championships. You couple a great running game with a dominant defense, you will win championships. It's why the Patriots lost to the giants, and why the Colts won't win it all this year either.

 

Our current offense coupled with a great D would win us 12 games this year. Unfortunately, our D is far from great.

Now on that note, we desperately need more offensive weapons around Henne, and Henne needs to develop more. And we need to stay healthy.

 

Aren't the last two Superbowl Champs Run First, Defensive teams? Am I missing something here?

 

this league is driven by teams who know their talent and what to do with it. they run the ball because they're a better running team than passing team with a bunch of awful receivers and no real threat at TE. the best teams pass a lot because they have amazing quarterbacks with great receivers and they CAN pass a lot. it'd be stupid for us to do that with our receivers.

 

Definitely take a few shots
Save wad ball for the fourth quarter

 

Watch the game today?
The middle was open

 

not you but everybody else

 

No, the Steelers were one of the WORST teams running the ball last year. As were the Cards.

 

Defense is most important, without a doubt. With a better defense you're not asking your first year starter to win the game for you late almost every week.

 

at times it was, yes. but a few times in one game doesn't account for much.

 

THe top offenses in this league are passing offenses.

I watch a lot of San Fran games because my friend is a fan and the 49ers have improved their offense by going to a spread attack with Alex Smith. This league is designed to make passing easier.

 

Wad ball does not win SBs. If you think that this is still a defense driven league then you haven't been paying attention. And if you think the last two SBs were won by run first teams then you really haven't been paying attention.

Look at the SB MVPs of the last 10 years. Five were QBs, three were WRs, One was a S and one was a LB. And none of defensive players won it in the last six years.

The rule of thumb is that a good passing offense averages 7.0+ YPA and a good rushing offense averages 4.0+ YPC.

[regular season] [post season]
2008 Steelers [7.1 YPA;3.7 YPC] [7.7 YPA; 2.9 YPC]
2007 Giants [6.2 YPA;4.6 YPC] [7.2 YPA;3.5 YPC]

These were not great or even good running teams in the post season, but they were good passing teams.


Now obviously you need balance and defense is a large part of that. But the successful teams have the ability to put up points quickly and then defenses that can pin their ears back and create turnovers. In other words they pass and defend the pass.

The rules are set up to favor passing though so getting good passing threats is key. On defense it's too hard to play when the offense has an option. The good teams are able to make their opponents one dimensional.

If you want a realistic chance to win a SB in today's NFL you better be able to put up points quickly. You will still need a complete team but you'll never be a complete team playing wad ball.

 

No, they were not.

2008 Steelers http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/pit/2008.htm

The Steelers had twice as many yards passing as running last year.

2007 Giants http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/nyg/2007.htm

The Giants were a decent running team, but still had 1,000 yards more passing than running.

We have about the same number of yards rushing as passing. That's freakish nowadays. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/mia/2009.htm

Unless the NFL changes the rules and penalty calling (on offensive holding, defensive pass interference, offensive pass interference, and protecting quarterbacks) the best teams every year are going to be the teams that pass and can defend the pass. Since we're not very good at either, we're a sub-.500 team right now.

 

It absolutely is not. Miami would have to do a complete 180 and we would have contracts on some seriously talented run oriented players that would go to waste. We have to have a passing game that can put up around 200 YPG, manage the ball, avoid turnovers and be a real threat to throw at any time. We have that more now than we have had in a long while, but it's still incomplete. Fasano probably had one of his more solid games of the season, but as a whole the receiving corps won't get us where we need to be. There is nothing wrong with being a power run team that can throw the ball.

I don't know how many times I've seen a team that can throw the ball well but can't run it lose because they can't manage a game clock and keep their own defense off the field. Hell if that was the formula we would have won half a dozen superbowls with Marino.

 

Defense is the most important thing. We have given up the most 4th quarter points in the NFL this year. Take away those points and we beat the 2 unbeaten teams left in the league and we win today. We are at 8 wins, if not 9. It starts with defense and it ends with defense. Through 11 games we have allowed like 130 something points in the 4th quarter...THAT IS THE PROBLEM!

 

No offense to the OP....

But...if we didnt have the worst 4th qtr defense in the last quarter century...

All of you would be just skippy with our offense. We would have beaten the Colts..the Saints...the Bills today....

Three losses if not more directly on the back of the D.

 

Ehhh???

We lost because we abandoned the run to pass.

If we ran it more we would have won.

 

Can't score when you throw 4 ints'!!!

 

The Bills linebacking corp sports a safety and a guy who was on the street until week 6. And, Fasano has had only one better receiving day in his career - last years opener against the Jets.

 

No, although the D certainly shares the blame. We got the ball back down by four against the Colts with 3 and a half minutes left. Couldn't score. Today we threw three INTs in the fourth quarter. Saints was a joint offensive-defensive collapse.

Bottom line is simple: in today's NFL, you have to be great at passing and great at pass defense. We're not good at either, and that has to change.

 

I don't know about that. The Colts can't run worth a damn and they are undefeated. The Saints have decent running statistics, but how much of that is down to the fact that they are playing against nickel defenses half the time?

We run very well and have six losses.

As for Marino, (1) it's a different league than 15 or even 7 years ago (2) for most of Marino's career, there were a few teams that were better at passing than we were. It's a passing league, now more than ever.

 

Our offense executed a beautiful drive once again to start the 2nd half, and once again, the defense showed their jlo....demoralizing....

I go into the offseason with an aggressive approach to upgrade the defense in the middle..i take that approach to the draft as well, and will move up some for the right linbacker or nose.

 

I watched it, did you??

We abandoned it on the first drive when we let Ricky throw the ball.

In the second half it was 14-14 and they took Rickey out and started passing because he was at that magic 22-25 carries. Let Hillard run the ball.

To win in this league you need a mix, but we were ramming the ball down the Bills throats and we tried to get to cute. The int's resulted in most of the Bills late points.

 

what it comes down to is that we need to fix the WR and TE positions. Once we fix those tow psotions our offense will be completed. The problem then becomes the defense which really just needs to be revamped. I mean, we need a NT, four linebackers and two safeties. That is 7 players on that side of the ball.

 

the joke in my house is that the Fins defense only allows points after we score....

 

No disagreement on the RW pass. Very stupid.

The rest of your post is not right. We had three possessions with the score 14-14 and Williams was in for all three.

After our first touchdown, by the way, we were NOT running it down their throats. Here are Williams' runs in our 9-minute drive: 5, 10, 2, 0, 2, 6, 0, 0, 1 (the TD). I thought he looked completely gassed for most of that drive.

 

The teams that took note and adapted to the rule change governing the contact DBs can have with WRs are the teams that are excelling in today's NFL. The teams that ignored it are going by the wayside. It's one of the major reasons that parity in the NFL is disappearing. We have been able to have some degree of success without the lack of an explosive passing attack due to some creativity with the Wild Cat, but it's a temporary band-aid. We have to add some explosiveness to this offense or we'll never get to the next level, IMHO. But I do agree to a certain extent to the dissenting opinions in this thread, defense still needs to be addressed as well.

 

Wrong. This league is driven by good coaching, good defense, AND RUNNING THE BALL(controlling the clock). Dont believe me? Well we had the Pats, Colts, and Saints on the ropes and our defense/coaching cost us the game. I mean would you rather have the Fins go deep to Ginn or have Ricky grind it out? Give the ball to your play-makers, not to those who cant make a play.

 

Good defense and good coaching, sure. But I don't understand how people can watch the NFL today and think that "RUNNING THE BALL (controlling the clock)" is the key. You can't control the clock any better than we did against the Colts -- 45 minutes! -- but we still lost. Why? Because we couldn't pass, and we couldn't stop the pass.

And sure, RW is a hell of a lot better than Ginn. We're a running team now. But we're never going to be a Super Bowl team until we massively upgrade our passing game and our pass defense.

 

You're not helping your case by mentioning those teams. 3 teams with explosive passing attacks that beat us despite controlling the clock and running the ball on them. 3 teams that have completely rewritten the record books with passing attacks built to take advantage of the rule changes governing contact DBs can have with WRs.

I'm not trying to give our defense a free pass, because they do need to play better. But these teams have created offenses that even the best defenses in the league can't stop consistently. To use a tired cliche, you can't stop them, you can only hope to contain them. And by contain I mean stop them once and awhile and answer back with an equally explosive attack.

 

i remember them showing that 4th 1/4 points allowed stat, durring the game.
we were the worst. like 20 points ahead of 2nd place and 30 or more ahead of 3rd.
and im sure its even worse after todays game.

 

Notice the conjunction I used was "AND", not "OR". Good coaching, good defense, AND running the ball/controlling the clock. For those 3 elite teams, we controlled the clock, but our defense let up and the coaches make questionable decisions. My point was if our defense held its ground, we would have won those games with our rushing attack.

 

This is meaningless. If our defense never gave up any points, we would win no matter what we did on offense. There is no defense that doesn't give up points, though. No defense all year has stopped the Saints or the Colts, and not many have stopped the Patriots.

If running the ball is so important, why are all the best teams (like the "elite" Saints, Colts and Patriots) passing teams? Why are all the good running teams playing .500 or worse?