I love football stats. I think that they tell an important part of the story. But I also believe that there’s never a “smoking gun” stat that tells you everything you need to know about what a team has done or will do.
Football is organic. It’s about timing, synchronicity, and the most difficult of all things to predict, human performance. Ultimately it comes down to how many points you gave up, and whether or not you gave you offense a chance to win.
I feel that these drive counters to be a realistic evaluation tool, especially in the modern NFL where things like Passing Yards are becoming irrelevant.
1st Quarter
- 9 plays, 50 yards – FIELD GOAL
- 9 plays, 45 yards – PUNT
- 5 plays, 88 yards – TD
2nd Quarter
- 9 plays, 82 yards – INTERCEPTION
3rd Quarter
- 15 plays, 80 yards – FIELD GOAL
4th Quarter
- 8 plays, 64 yards – INTERCEPTION
- 6 plays, 17 yards – PUNT
- 4 plays, 7 yards – TURNOVER ON DOWNS
- 4 plays, 99 yards – TD
Look, I’m not going to try and sugarcoat the 3 eighty-plus yards in a row that spanned the first, second and third quarters. There’s no doubt that the Patriots defense need to get off the field in those situations when they get to third down. And allowing first downs on 61% of your 3rd downs is gross.
But let’s look at the positives. In the third and fourth quarter, when the game was still in doubt the three Patriots defensive stands went: FG, INT, PUNT, TURNOVER ON DOWNS.
That is the kind of clutch defense that you need to win championships. Are there things to be improved? Of course, but when they needed it most the defense got the ball back to the offense every time.
And if you’re going to play bend don’t break defense one of the most important stats to look at is Red Zone defense. The Pats only gave up a score twice on five trips inside the 20 for the Raiders. That’s solid.