[CBFF] Defensive Records Broken

[mactbone]

Are you using yards or points for your ranking? I'm going to assume one or the other and point out that those don't adjust for schedule - so (hypothetically) facing eight of the top ten offenses would make them look worse than they really are. They don't adjust for situation - the Bears don't have an offense, so teams spent more time on the field getting yards and points, don't adjust for field position - a bad offense gives the other team lots of good field position, or facing a team that's running out the clock.

The defense wasn't stellar, but it was making strides and it wasn't far off from the Chicago defense without Harris. By DVOA, which does adjust for those things I mentioned and emphasizes stopping a team before they get the yards for a first down, the Bears end up 31st on offense (they were 18th last year) and 7th on defense (they were 2nd last year). Actually, they do a weighted rating too that drops value from the early games and the Bears are at 25th offense and 2nd defense - last year's weighted offense was 26th, defense was 2nd. They don't rate well against RBs this year (31st) and were only average against TEs. That's a bit odd since they were really good last year and you have to assume with Briggs and Urlacher that those would be an area of strength.

It'll be awhile but I'm going to go through some different things and try to find out what exactly the difference was - schedule, offense, defense, QB, O-line... probably a combination, but I'm especially curious why the defense took so long to round into shape. They started out average in DVOA and stayed there until getting better over the second half of the season and I'm going to look into when exactly it changed and why.
-Chris

----- Original Message ----
From: Phil DeNomme <pdenomme at gmail.com>
To: post at chicagobearsfanforum.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 2, 2008 12:42:53 PM
Subject: Re: [CBFF] Defensive Records Broken

Don't let Lovie know that.  He thought the defense played better than last
year.

-----Original Message-----
From: cbff-bounces at chicagobearsfanforum.com
[mailto:cbff-bounces at chicagobearsfanforum.com] On Behalf Of Jerry Madsen
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 11:39 AM
To: CBFF
Subject: [CBFF] Defensive Records Broken

Listening to Mully this AM, he put a new spin on the Bears' woes.
We've mainly been concerned about the offense this year, but he
pointed-out that the 2007 Bears defense did three things nobody had
ever done to a Bears' D:

1 - Allowed the most yards rushing in a single game by any Bears' D
(A. Peterson, Vikings)

2 - Allowed the most points in a single quarter by any Bears' D (Lions)

3 - Allowed, for the first time, a single player to get both 100 yards
rushing and 100 yards receiving (P.Thomas, Saints)

On top of all that, they went from being the 5th ranked to the 29th
ranked defense in the league.

At least the offense only fell from 15th to 25th.

Jerry

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