Worst Defense in the NFL

[The Huddle]

Originally Posted by dgack

No denying the scoring is down, and I'd wager a great deal of that gap is missing from Santana's statline from this year as compared to last, no?

I don't disagree with your re: Saunders and the legendary 700 pager, though to be fair, even he said it would take a year before everyone had it down. I don't think any of us expected to be this bad in the meantime, though.

Also wasn't intending to say that was our goal, just that it's how we got by last season, and the absence of those big plays on D surely accounts for a large chunk of why we haven't kept games close enough to win and won close ones this year with a similarly mediocre offense as last year's.

You make an excellent point re the offense benifitting from more big plays by the defense last year. Coming at it from that angle does indeed make a more compelling arguement against the defense. I'm just not prepared to throw the defense overboard while the offense watches, especially since I am having a hard time shjaking the feeling that hiring Saunders may ultimately turn out to be the single worst coaching decsion Joe Gibbs ever made. It's not that Saunders isn't a great offensive mind, but what sort of effect does it have when you come into the locker room of a team that just went 10-6 and advanced a round in the playoffs and tell them, essentially, that you're wiping the board and starting from scratch?