Defense ranked 10th

[Bostonheelfish]

I think it has a lot to do with Derrick Brown getting his sea legs back, and it was the Patriots game where they just ran at DJ Johnson. We’re seeing a tightened up defense now.

[strato]

17 hours ago, Jon Snow said:

There must be some really bad defenses out there.

We just played two of them 

[strato]

17 hours ago, L-TownCat said:

Nobody needed to throw against us last year.  Not hard to believe our defense last year was just that bad all around.

This year teams are forced to throw because of improved rush defense coupled with poor pass rush.  Just makes sense to attack our weaknesses.

Also, they aren’t consistently playing from big leads and it makes a difference in their pass/run balance. They can’t just sit on it and drain the clock. 

[L-TownCat]

1 minute ago, strato said:

Also, they aren’t consistently playing from big leads and it makes a difference in their pass/run balance. They can’t just sit on it and drain the clock. 

Yeah, now they just attack the middle and watch our LB’s and S’s run into each other like a Benny Hill skit.

[strato]

2 minutes ago, L-TownCat said:

Yeah, now they just attack the middle and watch our LB’s and S’s run into each other like a Benny Hill skit.

That LB in coverage thing is really going to limit us once people see enough of it. 

[WhoKnows]

18 hours ago, ColumbusCounty said:

In 6 games, we've only had 6 hurries??? ... that can't be accurate

We only have 5 sacks which is dead last. Some teams have 20-30. Our pass rush is atrocious, worst in the league. That’s why we’re 22nd in scoring defense even with a shutout. That Atlanta game helps our rankings so much, but we’ll likely trend down over the season as it counts for 6% instead of 17%.

Personally, the yardage numbers can be deceiving which is why I like scoring defense as a better representation.

We of course look way better than last year but I wouldn’t consider it a top 10 defense yet.

[Davidson Deac II]

8 hours ago, CRA said:

First 4 - 122 rushing yards per game allowed

Last 2 - 25 per game allowed.  

I mean, to me at least, that is drastically different. That's almost 100 yards difference on the ground per game. 

I mean, Penix just sabotaged Atlanta.   That's football.   They ran for 130 despite not even getting a chance to get into their run game thanks to Penix. Jags went for 200.  Every team the first 4 weeks went over 100+ except AZ and AZ had more than both the last 2 weeks combined in that game. 

D is clearly better than last year.  But within this season, the last 2 weeks, have really just been sort of wonky.  We aren't what the last 2 weeks says on the ground offensively or defensively.  No team in NFL history is what we statistically did the last 2 weeks. 

 

New England and Jacksonville thrashed us in all aspects of the game, no doubt about that.  

Regarding the Atlanta game, Atlanta got the vast majority of their rushing yardage in the second half, when we didn't care to much about the run.  As an example, Nathan Carter on the Falcons last drive when it was 30-0, had runs of 3 yards, 4, 9, 9, 10, and 9.  Throw in two carries by Bijan when we were up by 20 or more in the second half, and that is almost half their total run yards that were mostly meaningless. 

In the first half, we limited the Falcons 3 yards or less on all but two carries.  They went to the passing game because we forced them to rely on the passing game.  

Against the Cardinals, we shut their run game down, most of their yards were Kyler Murray scrambles.  Might have been some designed runs, I can't remember.  But their running backs did almost nothing. Even with the scrambles thrown in, we still held them to less than 3.8 a carry.   

Edited October 16, 2025 by Davidson Deac II