Sadistics Part 2: The Defense

Perhaps when the other team has a large lead they sit on the ball in the fourth quarter, thus reducing the total yards they could have accumilated?

As you state, “At this point, my theory is purely anecdotal. And that’s why I hesitate at this point to judge the defense, for good or bad. The stats simply don’t match what we have perceived from actually watching the team play.”

Supercalifragilisticexpialidociosly bad.

“Perhaps when the other team has a large lead they sit on the ball in the fourth quarter, thus reducing the total yards they could have accumilated?”

And our offense has gained an awful lot of its meager totals in that same garbage time. So the balance of Brickhorn’s analysis doesn’t really change, does it?

Oops.
I meant “supercalifragilisticexpialidocioUsly.”
That last ‘U’ always gets me.

The worst D1 offense I have ever seen and I have watched college football for 20 years. the worst.

OK. In my masochism I decided to look at the drive distribution you mentioned but did not take time to research. I’m afraid the defense does not come off well. In fact, the results are difficult to explain. To wit:

Texas has allowed 31 TDs. I count the two scores by Int return and FG return as 0 yardage drives.
Texas has allowed 12 TD drives of 49 yards or less (6 of those were 19 yds or less)
and 19 TD drives of 50 yards or more.
They have allowed 10 TD drives of 70 yards or longer and 6 of those were 80 yards or more.
FG scoring drives are distributed similarly.
In addition, of those 19 TD drives of 50 yards or more, a full 16 of them took 6 or more plays, if my count is correct.
This defense has been victimized somewhat by poor field position, but it has also been abysmally bad at stopping other teams from driving the length of the field.
Much worse than I expected.
How do you see this?

Oh, and I didn’t bother with the offense. Why would I?

That chart is golden and explains the situation perfectly.

If we had an above average offense we probably lose only the ISU, OU and OSU game. UCLA and KSU were due to complete offensive and special teams meltdowns for 3+ quarters.

In my opionion ISU was the only game where the defense did not show up at all and was not “disadvantaged” by a ridiculously bad offensive performance. The UCLA offense wasn’t Tech or KSU bad but we had total special team meltdown in that game to enhance the situation

Is Huck going to post updated numbers this week? I’m guessing his super computer is going to spit out a 9-6 type game. Not sure who it will predict to win, but we might not see any TDs

What I recall from the defensive effort from earlier in the season was the number of drive-sustaining penalties, especially on third down, and especially of the stupid variety (personal fouls, offsides). Those wouldn’t show up in any yard per play analysis, would they?

Another metic is red zone efficiency – how often does a defense allow a touchdown when the opposing offense is in the red zone. That also wouldn’t show up, right?

The general perception I have of this defense is that once the ball starts rolling downhill, it is almost powerless to stop it, and that it has become progressively worse as the season has continued. Still not as bad as the offense (if there is a more appropriate word for that side of the ball for us this year, then I don’t know it) and special teams, just not our standard of excellence.

In addition, of those 19 TD drives of 50 yards or more, a full 16 of them took 6 or more plays, if my count is correct.

I don’t think that is too illuminating. Too much wiggle room there.
E.g.: 00:43 BU Williams, T. 59 yd pass from Griffin III, R. (Jones, Aaron kick)
         7 plays, 69 yards, TOP 3:23 10 – 9

Maybe some standard deviation on ypp on td scoring drives would work? Something like that.

Sometimes a chart is worth 1,000 words.
 
Great work, Brick.

Great stuff.

We have had so many blowouts that I think the only real way to look at this is through the first 3 quarters of each game. Almost every game has been garbage time in the 4th.

Anyway, the basic point is there and it aint pretty. Our defense is an average guy trying to run a marathon with an elephant on his back, with predictable results.

DGinBigD -

Perhaps when the other team has a large lead they sit on the ball in the fourth quarter, thus reducing the total yards they could have accumilated?

It could be. But that would only explain a couple of games this season. For the most part, we’ve always been within reach of victory. Well, within reach of victory for any team with a not completely impotent offense.

Lurker -

I’m not sure how to explain the stats you cited. The main problem is that I have no context to understand whether and to what degree those statistics indicate a problem.

My gut says that our defense’s performance has been “spiky” – very good or excellent for the most part, but disastrously bad in short bursts. The end result of that kind of performance would be what we see in the stats: pretty good YPP, but mediocre PPG. I’ll call this the “bimodal” theory. In other words, if you plotted Texas’s YPP stats on a drive-by-drive basis, there would be two clusters: (1) drives that had low YPP and stalled out and (2) drives with high YPP that typically resulted in scores.

Another possibility is entirely inconsistent with the bimodal theory – namely, that the defense is so consistent in its per-play yardage yield that first downs occur with regularity. The D gives up 4.48 YPP, which is good as a mean measure. But if the standard deviation is really tight, that means that you would expect most 3-down sets to result in first downs and, consequently, drives to often result in touchdowns. That’s the tricky part about relying on YPP – there’s a certain discreteness in the 4-down limit that isn’t captured by the mean number. Because failure to gain a first down is fatal to a drive, a wider deviation in YPP is typically preferable.

I don’t have the stats yet to support either view. It would make an interesting off-season project. Any volunteers?

Voice of Reason -

The general perception I have of this defense is that once the ball starts rolling downhill, it is almost powerless to stop it, and that it has become progressively worse as the season has continued.

That’s consistent with my take. The chart bears that out, as well. The D is getting worse as the season progresses, probably for a number of reasons (opposing OCs have figured out that we don’t have any DTs or safeties, the defense has given up after weeks of futility, etc.).

Scip -

Sometimes a chart is worth 1,000 words.

True, but don’t read too much into it. YPP is only one measure. In my estimation, the defense is not nearly as good as YPP would make it look. But it’s also not nearly as bad as PPG indicates. Texas has a good, not great defense, saddled with the burden of horrible – possibly historically bad – offense and special teams.

More charts please. They make it look like I may be doing something remotely work-related.

I don’t use the chart as proof of the defense’s greatness. It’s not a great defense and sometimes not even a very good one.
 
However, viewed in relation to the offense, adjusted for opponent quality, it’s damning.

viewed in relation to the offense, adjusted for opponent quality, it’s damning.

It certainly shows which side of the ball deserves the most blame. I mean, it’s not even close.

Our four victories are almost entirely attributable to excellent defense. You can possibly give equal credit to the O for the NU game, based on its scoring performance.

The defense played better than the offense in all but one of the six losses (OSU). I tend to think all of the losses save UCLA were full-team meltdowns, although typically the offense carried less of its weight than did the defense. Certainly, with a competent offense, we win a 2-3 of those and put our defense in a more favorable position (blitzing a desperate offense) to further pad its stats.

In no single game this season except NU and, maybe, OU has the offense put us in a position to win. The defense won a few for us. It was unable to win the rest.

Topographical, imo.

Another aspect of the high play count, long TD drives the defense has given up which I did not mention is that the long TD drives are distributed throughout the game. In other words, its not that the defense hangs tough until it can’t anymore because of fatigue and then implodes. They have had meltdowns right out of the gate against several opponents. Other times they are solid. It’s very hard to understand what’s going on with them. Muschamp defenses the last couple of years have tended to give up a long drive to start the game, but then settle down. They haven’t settled down as well this year.

And this does not excuse the offense or special teams. They have been much worse.

Patron:
“I don’t think that is too illuminating. Too much wiggle room there.
E.g.: 00:43 BU Williams, T. 59 yd pass from Griffin III, R. (Jones, Aaron kick)
7 plays, 69 yards, TOP 3:23 10 – 9

Maybe some standard deviation on ypp on td scoring drives would work? Something like that."

I don’t have the statistical chops for something like that.
If you look at the scores Texas has given up, most have not been on really long plays. Most of the long drives are of the soul-eating variety: sustained and steady. Early in the season stupid penalties kept some of those alive, but lately that has not been the problem.

Based on my gut-level observations and what I’ve read about how teams have been attacking us, this defense has some glaring weaknesses which opponents have taken advantage of time and again. With offense and special teams providing no cover whatsoever, the defense has no “wiggle room.” And it must be said, at times they have caved almost as badly as the offense and special teams, just not with the mind-numbing regularity of those two units.

BrickHorn,

Exactly. There is no reason that with a slightly above average offense and the defense playing exactly the same, we’d be 7-3 right now. Lose to ISU, OSU and OU. It sure is hard to even give the offense the benefit of the doubt for NU due to the fact one touchdown was set up by a fumble deep in NU territory.

I think ISU was a full game offensive and defensive meltdown. ISU had good offenseive numbers both passing and rushing.

Against UCLA I recall thinking that if we had just run 3 plays and punted in the first half we would have only been down 3-0 and the second half UCLA first drive score, where the defense gave up, would have made it 10-0. Well within reach.

KSU is the weird one/outlier in that shows a good defensive performance but 260 yards rushing and basically zero passing is something you just never see anymore. This performance laid bare just how weak our DT and S play is, and that Muschamp can’t cover for it. I’ll throw in the LB’s too but I think they are good enough if the DL’s do their job OK.

Anyway this season will be one to remember and forget all at once. Being at UT from 85-89 gives me some perspective on how bad it can get. This is the worst because there is no good rational reason for this to be happening to this staff and these players.

As an aside, this season is the proof that it was a crime that Colt McCoy never won the Heisman and that Jordan Shipley didn’t win the Biletnikof.

I was interested in the impact of offensive and defensive performance on game outcome. So I regressed each game’s point differential (positive values for wins, negative ones for losses) on the offensive and defensive metrics in the chart. According to the analysis, the best predictor of point differential is defensive performance. Offensive performance has no impact. Undoubtedly, the results were skewed a good deal by our very good defensive performances in the wins over Tech and Nebraska.

The conclusion is that we can only win if our defense plays very well. In other words, it has to hold the opposing offense to much less than its usual production. Overall, our offense has been consistently bad throughout the season and therefore has had no effect on point differential. Two of the three worst offensive performances occurred in wins.

I see Texas play and they seem to be suffering from the same problem as Tech going from 12 wins to 4. The guys who replaced Jordan Shipley and Earl Thomas aren’t near as good. And, it also looks like Colt McCoy was a lot better than I thought. Hix isn’t as good as Ulatoski was and Mitchell isn’t Texas material. It only takes one or two difference makers on each side of the ball. Aaron Williams, Keenan Robinson and Sam Acho are going to have a hard time scoring enough TDs to win in this conference. Mike Davis appears to be one of those pieces to the future. It felt good going into a game with McCoy, Shipley, Cosby, Orakpo, Kindle, and Thomas on the field. But, the harsh reality is A&M, OU, and OSU have those guys now. I still see them on the Texas defense, but I just don’t see the NFL players on the OL or offensive skill positions. Nothing recruiting can’t fix at Texas. It won’t be that easy for us. At least, we’re actually landing public school kids with other BCS offers now.

jmanh -

Interesting analysis. Your findings underscore the depth of our offensive woes. Texas is so bad on that side of the ball that it takes a near-Herculean effort by the defense to have a chance to win.

I wonder if there is a flip side to our analysis that YPP is indicative of how good the defense is compared to PPG. Essentially we are arguing that the discrepancy between the two stats has to do with the fact that PPG reveals the high turnover ratio and short field tendencies provided by our lovely offense.

But couldn’t the reverse be true? In other words, the reason that the discrepancy exists is not because of the horrible position that our defense it put in persistantly (which it is) but rather that the short field counts in the defenses favor. The get 7 points against them statistically, but at the same time say, only 35 yards. The very fact that the opposing offense wasn’t allowed to continue may be the only reason why the yardage is so low. In other words, the only thing stopping our opponents’ offense is the endzone.

Don’t get me wrong, the defense is not the problem here. Our two standout games, Tech IN Lubbock and Nebraska were because of how well the defense played, while there are no bright spots period for the offense. But I have been puzzled how poorly the defense has played against some teams (namely UCLA) particularly when we know they are going to run the ball and then are unable to stop it. Just curious if anyone had a position on this.

It’s pretty simple….. this year (even worse than other years) we have had no running attack we can count on but young GG, who is trying to carry the whole damn thing on his shoulders. We can’t catch routine passes consistently, and we have fumbled the ball in bad situations with the best of em in every imaginable way. Hell if we just had an average running attack, GG would not press so much and the results for that young QB and the offense would have been much better. I know for a fact that Colt McCoy was never asked to do as much as GG until he had almost a full year of starts under his belt and even then he had a better line, better group of receivers, better backs for the most part and the zone read to keep the defense a little off balance. The fact is Davis apparently does not know how to field an effective offense without featuring a running QB, but he has tried this year and the result is he just dumped too much on our young QB with virtually no support.

I think it time for a younger group of coaches to step into the fire. Mack et al have had a good run…so be it

Marc -

Interesting theory. While the bad starting field position certainly prevents opposing offenses from accumulating huge gains (what Mack calls “explosive plays”), I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of touchdown drives against Texas this season were of the slow and steady variety. I believe that’s what Lurker was getting at with his drive chart.

It would be interesting to see a chart of YPP on drives based on starting field position. Maybe I can put something together on that later.

There nothing wrong with giving up some big drives. We have some weaknesses on D. We knew about them coming into the season. However, I’ve thought all season that we’ve been poor in the red zone. So I hopped on over to ncaa.com to check things out. It turns out we’re 91st in points per trip to the red zone. We give up 5.2 points per trip. Not good. This may be inflated a bit by things like fumbling punts at the goal line, but not enough to drop us all the way to 91st. I think this is a big part of the disconnect between yards and points. We do a good job of limiting teams yardage, but when they do make it down the field we fold.

Still, overall the defense has been good, and the offense has not, so I agree with the oints that Brickhorn and Scipio are making.

“I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of touchdown drives against Texas this season were of the slow and steady variety.”

Not the “vast” majority, but I was shocked at many they have given up.
Of the ten 70+ yd TD drives Texas has given up, these are the number of plays:
4,8,13,11,11,9,7,9,2,10
Here are the scoring play distance on each of those drives:
47,11,18,16,18,15,30,8,67,1

Overall, Texas has allowed 10 scoring plays (not counting the IR and the FGR) of 20 yds or more
47,38,24,20,20,59,69,30,34,67
Just for comparison.

What can we deduce from this?
The defense has given up a LOT of long, sustained drives.
They have also given up some longer scoring plays.
They are getting killed from every distance, either by big plays or sustained drives.
So, HOW THE HELL can their per play average be so good??

Is mystery.

Marc -

I took a look at the drive-by-drive statistics. Interestingly, the YPP allowed are amazingly constant with starting field position. The correlation coefficient is 0.025. On average, our defense gives up slightly more YPP on drives that start deep in our territory. If you take out the handful of long 1- or 2-play drives (which necessarily result in extremely high YPP), the slight positive correlation between YPP and starting field position would become more significant. I’ll post the scatter plot when I get the chance.

The basic conclusion is that the defense does slightly worse on a YPP basis when it is dealt poor field position by the offense or special teams. A result of mental and physical exhaustion perhaps?

Note: I did not factor out half-ending or game-ending drives. I’m not sure they’d make a difference anyway.

Lurker -

So, HOW THE HELL can their per play average be so good??

I think the defense is simply excellent in non-TD drives. And here’s my back-of-the-envelope proof:

On drives resulting in a touchdown (30 drives), Texas gives up 8.94 YPP.

On all other drives (104 drives), Texas yields an average of 2.78 YPP.

I don’t know how that compares to other teams. But it seems like there’s a significant bimodality there, indicating a degree of drive-by-drive schizophrenia. My guess is that Texas is incredible 75% of the time and horrible 25% of the time.

Also, there is fairly substantial correlation (0.35) between starting field position and resulting points. In other words, the probability that the opponent will score increases with increasingly favorable field position.

That’s not unexpected. What is unexpected is that your offense and special teams routinely fuck your defense over on field position.

Lurker and Brickhorn- good points.

I went to look for yards per quarter, but failed in my quest. I did another analysis and looked at the minutes per quarter because it was easy to find. Only realizing after the fact that its meaningless in two ways: 1) it doesnt answer the question I posed and 2) in aggregate our opponents have controlled the ball more than we have in each quarter (not each quarter of each game).

To your post about garbage points, this chart bears out your thoughts.
Quarter 1 2 3 4
texas 33.00 53.00 33.00 78.00
Opponent 47.00 95.00 53.00 48.00

DG – I’d be interested to see how that breakdown looks for losses versus wins. That way, what is and isn’t garbage time becomes more apparent.

There really is no way to statistically measure it, but we have given up several of our big drives when it became clear to the defense that the offense was going to screw them all day (exception being OU). It shows how emotional football is. When you do your job 3 or 4 times in row and the offense keeps going 3 and out, demorilization sets in. That is what has happened this year a bunch.

Should the defense “quit” like this? maybe not, but it is entirley predictable and human nature. Everyone has a quiting point despite what people say. I play pick up basketball 3 times a week and every now and then I quit on a team, when its clear the other guys aren’t giving a fair performance.

I don’t sit on the floor or anything, but quit in terms of not giving 100%. Nobody gives 100%, 100% of the time. they key is to get as many of your guys giving 98%, most of the time. Its hard for WM to get that out of them, when the offense is ginv 505 effort and performance.

….50% effort and performance

God or Muschamp (or is that the same thing?) once said that statistics are for losers.

Why do you ignore the counsel of God?

If the point you’re attempting to make is that the defense should be exempt from criticism because it’s been better than the offense this year, it’s a mighty poor point that you’re attempting to make.

Where were you in the preseason when this defense was touted as perhaps the best defense in the Mack Brown era at Texas? That now its only claim to fame is the one you offer, i.e., that this year’s defense is better than the worst offense in the Mack Brown era at Texas, is a helluva comedown whether you realize it or not.

“What is unexpected is that your offense and special teams routinely fuck your defense over on field position.” — BrickHorn

What is also unexpected is for a defense to rountinely collapse when it’s forced to defend a short field. Great defenses sometimes hold the opposition to FGs in such situations. Sometimes they even stone the opposing offense. This almost never happens with Texas’ D.

In those situations our defense waves the white flag. We’re giving up TDs something like 75% of the time on short field scoring drives (read: 40 yards or less). That’s remarkably bad any way you look at it.

Will Muschamp is on record as saying that besides wins and losses the only stat that matters to a defense is points-per-game given up. According to that metric our defense ranks about #54 in the country so far this year. That sounds about right.

So, yes, the defense has outperformed the offense this year. They have every right to taunt the offense with the “We’re #54! We’re #54!” chant and so do you.

I separated the points-per-quarter numbers into wins and losses. It’s important to remember that simply tallying points scored by quarter will result in an asymmetric error – namely, the 2nd and 4th quarters will be given disproportionate “credit” for scores, as the stats for these quarters will include drives that began (and possibly persisted mostly) in the 1st and 3rd quarters, only to culminate in an early 2nd or 4th quarter score.

That said, here’s what I found:

Texas Wins:

Quarter: Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
TEXAS : 24.11% 42.86% 17.86% 15.18
OPP : 19.61% 47.06% 5.88% 27.45

Texas Losses:

Quarter: Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
TEXAS : 15.24% 11.43% 15.24% 58.10
OPP : 19.27% 36.98% 26.04% 17.71

Some Notes

In both wins and losses, the defense’s worst quarter by far is the 2nd. Even accounting for the discrepancy I discussed above, the 2nd quarter is where the bulk of our opponent’s scoring activity occurs.

In wins, Texas scores 2/3rds of its points in the first half. In losses, Texas scores almost 75% of its points in the second half, and nearly 60% in the fourth quarter. The average score after 3 quarters in our losses has been 26-7. Basically, the majority of Texas’s scoring in losses has come once the opponent was up by three scores.

Texas’ defense has played relatively poorly in the first half. In wins, Texas yields 66% of the points allowed in the first half; in losses, 56% of points allowed occur in the first half.

There is virtually no difference between % of points allowed in wins and losses in the first quarter. This masks the problem somewhat, as there is a big difference in average 1Q points allowed: 2.5 in wins, 6.2 in losses.

For the defense, the big difference between wins and losses has come in the third quarter. 3Q accounts for only 6% of allowed points in our wins, but 26% in losses. In terms of average points, the D has given up 0.75 3Q PPG in wins and 8.3 3Q PPG in losses.

The defense is also benefiting from its opponents’ trash time let-up. However, the distinction between its Q1-3 and Q4 performance is not as dramatic as is the offense’s.

The average score at the end of each quarter is interesting:

Wins:

Q1: 6.75 – 2.5
Q2: 18.75 – 8.5
Q3: 23.75 – 9.25
Q4: 28 – 12.75

Losses:

Q1: 6.2 – 2.7
Q2: 18 – 4.7
Q3: 26.3 – 7.3
Q4: 32 – 17.5

In the average loss, the offense is managing just over a touchdown for the first 45 minutes of play.

Another note: these numbers include non-offensive touchdowns. Texas has had one (?) non-offensive touchdown this season. I’m not sure how many our opponents have had, but it’s more.

Also not included in these numbers is any way of accounting for field position.

jpsantini -

Let’s see if it is possible to generate a coherent response to your rambling criticism.

If the point you’re attempting to make is that the defense should be exempt from criticism because it’s been better than the offense this year, it’s a mighty poor point that you’re attempting to make.

Did you even read the article? I most certainly did not say that the defense should be “exempt from criticism,” or anything approaching it.

Where were you in the preseason when this defense was touted as perhaps the best defense in the Mack Brown era at Texas? That now its only claim to fame is the one you offer, i.e., that this year’s defense is better than the worst offense in the Mack Brown era at Texas, is a helluva comedown whether you realize it or not.

What in holy hell are you blathering about? I never claimed that this defense was the best in Mack’s tenure. And it’s certainly not accurate to say that the defense is only good in comparison to our atrocious offense. Quite the contrary, this defense is better than the vast majority of other D1 defenses. It’s just readily apparent that the defense is much, much better at its job than our offense is at doing its own job. So, when you’re looking at who caused this year’s meltdown, the offense should shoulder most of the blame.

What is also unexpected is for a defense to rountinely collapse when it’s forced to defend a short field. Great defenses sometimes hold the opposition to FGs in such situations.

True. But Texas has held the opponents to FGs when they start in the red zone. I’d prefer that they do it more often, and I think the red zone flubs reveal the defense’s emotional fragility, but they’ve stymied 29% of drives starting in our red zone.

Here’s the list of red zone drives that didn’t end the game:

Opp, Started at, Plays, Yards, YPP, Result

UCLA, 20, 4, -11, -2.75, Missed FG
UCLA, 4, 2, 4, 2, TD
Rice, 20, 3, 20, 6.67, TD
KSU, 14, 2, 14, 7, TD
KSU, 12, 4, -1, -0.25, FG
KSU, 10, 1, 10,10, TD
Baylor, 7, 11, 1.6, TD

Of the seven drives, I really only see three drives that could be considered “collapses” – the Rice drive and the two KSU TD drives.

Other than that, the defense played well on a play-by-play basis, but, in two cases, was unable to overcome the fact that the opponent only needed 4 and 11 yards for a touchdown. On the other two drives, the D forced a FG attempt.

Are you honestly criticizing the defense for yielding 15 yards in a total of 9 plays? Seriously?

So, yes, the defense has outperformed the offense this year. They have every right to taunt the offense with the "We’re #54! We’re #54!" chant and so do you.

You started your first post denying the relevance of statistics. You end your second post with the above, in which you base your point entirely on one arbitrarily-chosen statistic, with no accounting for context. Lack of clear-mindedness, imo.

And, btw, Texas ranks #96 nationally on TDs allowed per red zone trip. That’s obviously horrible.

It’s fantastic to read santini’s shitbrained posts here AND on BON. Fuck, at least confine your asininity to one or the other, kthx.

stats are misleading – this is the 7th ranked Total Defense but 41rst against the run and 44th against in Pass Efficiency Defense. They give up big plays and just can’t stop anyone when it really counts. I’d like to know the national ranking in 3rd down conversions, where can I look that up?

I think the defense is simply excellent in non-TD drives. And here’s my back-of-the-envelope proof:

On drives resulting in a touchdown (30 drives), Texas gives up 8.94 YPP.

On all other drives (104 drives), Texas yields an average of 2.78 YPP.

I don’t know how that compares to other teams. But it seems like there’s a significant bimodality there, indicating a degree of drive-by-drive schizophrenia. My guess is that Texas is incredible 75% of the time and horrible 25% of the time.

====

excellent breakdown by Brickhorn. This is what we see in the game, that UT is gashed when other teams score, but looks pretty good when they are stopped. What this means is that opposing offensive coaches are making adjustments but UT defensive coaches and players are not doing mid game adjustments. UT is losing the in game scheming battle…aaaah.

we know they are going to run the ball and then are unable to stop it.

In order to stop the run, you must practice against a team that can actually run. It seems highly unlikely that our D gets to do that, does it not?

I believe that the pre-season hope that the defense was going to be the best ever under Mack, was based on how they shut down the offense….

 of course the offense has been shut down by some mighty powerful defenses this year. /