http://xfinity.comcast.net/slideshow/sports-2011teamdefense/29/ Above the iggles, pats, but below the Jests.
I have no idea who this Raanan is. It sounds like it's a revelation on Miami being #5, when they finished #6, and were #3 before the Pat's disaster. Yawn.
Your numbers are right, but they're based on "total defense" (yards allowed per game). Volume numbers (such as total yardage) don't hold any meaning as a measure of quality. We were 18th overall in defensive passer rating, and 3rd in the division. This defense will truly be elite when it cracks the top echelons of DPR. And I don't know who the hell Raanan is either.
All that the DPR tells us is that we didn't create turnovers in the passing game. It says nothing about our rush defense either.
DPR tells us how effectively teams defend the passing game, which is more important than how teams defend the run game. Running back is a generic, fungible position. You can throw almost anyone out there and get a 4.0 YPC. Defending a position lauded when a player gets a 100 yard game is not as important as defending a position lauded when a player gets a 300 yard game. Through no small coincidence, the 0-16 Lions fielded the worst pass defense in NFL history. So when it's said that the Dolphins had the sixth ranked defense in 2010… well, it's not a very credible achievement, because the measure being used (total yardage surrendered per game) is meaningless. That's the real point here. And did we ever find out who the hell this Raanan person is?
http://xfinity.comcast.net/slideshow/sports-2011teamdefense/1/ Looks like some guy who works for XFinity. Never heard of him either.
DPR doesn't understand the difference between a 10 yd completion on 1st and 10 and a similar completion on 3rd and 15. It doesn't know if an int came in a crucial situation or on a hail mary at the end of the half. Sacks are not counted at all. You have to watch and understand the game to make an accurate assessment of how good a defense is, simple as that.
DPR isn't perfect, but it is one of the single defensive stat measures that is most correlated to winning.
Des how are you analyzing this defense without quantifying its dropped int's? or are you?, for me its how well the opponent moved the ball against us, which is the ultimate decider for me, yards against, and before the last game of the season last year, we were 3rd in the NFL with an extremely inordinate amount of dropped easy int's..imagine where would of be if we make half those plays.
