"Defense wins championships."
It's been said so often with regard to sports that it's hard to pinpoint where the quote actually originated. In fact, it's almost become the biggest sports cliche around. Preventing the opposition from scoring seems like the most important aspect of any game. Unfortunately, what people fail to realize when taking this approach is one very simple thing:
You yourself still need to score in order to win the game.
Regardless of the sport, statistics don't always tell the entire story. Looking at the final score of a baseball game that ended 1-0, you might surmise that the team which was shut out more than likely failed to get on base. However, what you don't see by the score is that the team scoring the one run had only one hit, a solo home run, that led to the only run of the game, while the losing team gathered 10 hits, but couldn't score. The score itself doesn't tell the whole story.
Or, for the purposes of this post, take the recently started NFL season as an example. More specifically, the opening game of the 2011 season between the defending Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers and the 2009 champs, the New Orleans Saints. The highly anticipated season opener lived up to the hype, with two high-powered offenses shooting it out to the tune of a 42-34 final score, in favor of the Packers. Within minutes after the final gun sounded, many people began questioning the defending champ's defense, having allowed 34 points.
Again, the final score itself doesn't tell the whole story.
Of the last 10 Super Bowl Champions, five had at least one game during their championship season in which they allowed more than 30 points on defense, with the 2007 New York Giants having allowed 30 or more points in four games during their '07 campaign. Along those same lines, three of the last five Super Bowl winners ('06 Colts, '07 Giants, '09 Saints) allowed over 20 points per game.
Why do I bring this up? Of the 34 points allowed Thursday night by the Packers, only 27 came against their defense, with the other touchdown coming in the form of a punt return. Over the last five years, those same three Super Bowl winning teams ('06 Colts, '07 Giants, '09 Saints) allowed a combined eight (8) 30+ point offensive performances from their opponents, yet still managed to win the ultimate prize. Oddly enough, those three instances are the only three instances over the last 10 seasons where a team has ranked higher offensively than they have defensively. This was never more evident than the '09 Saints run to the title, where they scored 510 total points to take the top offensive ranking in the NFL, but ranked 20th in defense, giving up a total of 341 points. That made their average margin of victory 10.6 points.
The last I checked, outscoring your opponents by 10 points per game means you still win, whether the final score is 10-0 or 44-34. To quote former Jets and Chiefs coach Herm Edwards, "You play to win the game!"
With all of this being said, it seems to steer us towards a new philosophy in sports, which can be summed up in a simple quote from former lawyer and author, Alan Dershowitz:
"In law, as in sports, the best defense is often a good offense."
I think the point is that no team is going to win a SuperBowl allowing 30+ pts/game. You can't score enough to win games (best pts/game scored in the NFL last year was 32.4, no one else was above 30).
ReplyDeleteThe Packers won't allow that all year, it was one game but it's no coincidence that the Top 4 teams in Pts Allowed last year were !) Pittsburgh 2) Green Bay 3) Baltimore 4) Chicago... accounting for 3/4 of the Conference Championship teams and all 4 being playoff teams.