Second half we punted and put Minnesota on the 5 yard line. They surprised everyone with a pass on first down. Ponder had ages to throw the ball as we didn't rush anybody - incomplete.......

Second down - AP rushes to the edge gets 15 yards easily. Nobody close. I am thinking here we go again.......

1st down - pass incomplete
2nd down PASS incomplete
3rd down PASS!!!!! incomplete

The minnesota adjustments in the half made one heck of a difference for our run defense. With that said AP has made a living running on teams that knows he will be coming. He is one of the best backs ever to play this game so looking back on it I can "enjoy" him faking people out

Believe it or not, I'm with Techworlds on this one. Those DVOA stats are misleading, and most likely propped up a great deal by the first 5 games of the season when the defense was lights out.

I am not here screaming that the sky is falling. I fully expect the defense to get things turned around. But I dont know how anyone can watch the defense over the course of a month, in consecutive weeks give up 350+ passing to Brady and Stafford and 150-200 to Gore and Peterson, giving up 75% on 3rd down in Detroit, and say "ho hum. so what?"

People were calling this an elite defense. The Flynnicists were screaming that the team was wasting an elite defense by playing a rookie qb. THAT was the prevailing opinion of how good the defense was. ELITE. It's beyond clear that the defense isn't elite, and our expectations were a bit overblown. The first half of the GB game did a lot to it, and now looks more an anomaly than anything. Still, a very good defense with the ability to play elite. But not an elite defense. Not when you have performances like the past month.

I'm with Tech. I don't think the defense sucks. But I want it to be awesome. Because I know it has the ability to be so. Just ok doesnt cut it, as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps by remembering that a crucial player is out with an injury?

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If Jason Jones makes that big a difference, we got problems.

Interior pressure has been the primary difference between this year and last. It's always been a crucial component for pass rush, and Jones hasn't been bad against the run either.

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That's fine and all. But if the effectiveness of your entire unit drops off a cliff sans one single player, a rotational back up at that, then you are riding a very fine line. Great defenses can withstand one missing one player.

It's hard to remember sometimes but the opponent has as much of a say in the outcome of the game as we do. If the opponent is strong in a certain area and weak in others, we win by exploiting that weakness more than they can utilize their strength. Giving up yards to Peterson was frustrating as a fan and there were things we should have done better about it. However, most of us would have taken holding them to 20 points if we had been given the choice before the game. Add in the forced fumble which our offense was able to turn into 7 points, and the Vikings game feels like the second game we have won this year because of both our offense and defense.

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Jones is anything but a rotational backup.

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Okay, so maybe that pass rush is still an issue. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Damn right!

We allowed AP to run wild in the first half, yet, which team was up on the scoreboard at halftime? Second half, different story. Yards given up do not necessarily lead to points given up.

Given that Ponder basically sucks, why did AP and the rest of minnies Rb's get so few carries after halftime? Could it be we adjusted and made their life more difficult? Cuz I have a hard time thinking they would put the game in Ponder and a bunch of hurt Wr's hands.

Go check out the weighted DVOA, which makes games earlier in the season increasingly less influential. Report back your results.

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Even if he's a starter. If the 2012 Seattle Seahawks defense hinges on Jason Jones, that's a problem. If you are a top to elite defense in the NFL, you should be able to withstand losing a single player, outside of top level all-pro players. If Houston lost a player of Jones' ability, and their defense fell in the tank, we'd all be saying, "see look, guess Houston's d isn't as amazing as everyone thinks."

To all those saying the Minnesota game exposed our defense as not being very good, we gave up 306 yards. Our average is 309.2. So if anything, that performance made our defense (statistically) better.

It just looked bad because it was one player picking up most of the yardage.

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Yea.

Ponder's stat line:



I know it's Christian noodle arm ponder, but for the love of god that's insane! We totally shut their passing game down.

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I dont look at it as a matter of total yards. I look at it as a matter of what opposing offenses are able to do to us play by play. For one half of the game, the opposing offense made our defense look terrible. At least by running the ball. Plays where our defenders looked clueless and the opponent was gashing us left and right.

I want to give the Hawks d credit for making halftime adjustments and playing much better in the 2nd half. But for some baffling reason the Vikes only ran Peterson FIVE times in the 2nd half. Instead choosing to put the game on Ponder's arm. Hawks d won out, so you give them that. But the only time the Hawks d didn't get run all over by Peterson was when the Vikings decided not to run the ball.

"It's hard to remember sometimes but the opponent has as much of a say in the outcome of the game as we do. If the opponent is strong in a certain area and weak in others, we win by exploiting that weakness more than they can utilize their strength."

I disagree with this to a point. If we had a truly elite defense, it would dictate what the other team can do. They impose their will on the other team, and take them out of their game plan. It's SF's defense telling teams they just aren't going to run that day. It's Pitt and the Raven's defense a couple of years ago saying that you're just not going to move the ball on us. To a certain extent, it was our defense telling the Pats they weren't running against us when they had been average 250 yds/game rushing the previous 3 games. Brady had a career high in passing attemps. Career High.

An elite offense will do the same thing. It's SF, us, and Houston telling folks "hey, we're gonna run. try to stop it" and then running on them. That's when teams stack the box and we kill them over the top, which is what Pete and Bevell want to do, precisely. So, saying a team kinda had it's way with us, or "he's an elite player, no one else stopped him" or "they've done it to other teams" isn't us being elite that game, for sure. Besides, Minny hasn't done that to everybody , or AP would have 1600 yards already this season.

I also disagree that it is a 1 game anomaly. SF and Minn gashed us with the run, and Detroit killed us with the pass (since they can't run well, and passing is their strength), it's becoming a trend, and that's worrisome to a lot of us.

The only thing that's really been a significant trend is the quality of opponent we've faced these last four weeks. That was the toughest part of our schedule in terms of offensive strength. It's easier from here.

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Just for fun, I took the top teams in the playoff race and used DVOA to figure out who'd win - if it's close in DVOA (+/- 15%) the home team gets it. Here is what the final season's playoff teams would be:

West
x-SF 12-4
(5th Wildcard) Seattle 11-5

North
z-Chicago 14-2
(6th Wildcard) Green Bay 11-5
Detroit 7-9
Minnesota 6-10

East
x-NYG 12-4
Dallas 11-5

South
z-Atlanta 13-3
TB 8-8

I have a hard time believing Dallas is suddenly going to win out, but I stuck by the rules and that's what happens. Doesn't matter, though, they don't get in.

1st round: Seattle at SF, GB at NYG

I'm going to save this just to see how close it comes to being right. what the heck. (Obviously, by my rules, the home team wins almost every playoff game, so the playoffs go like this: Giants advance to play Atlanta, Atlanta wins. SF advances to play Chicago, Chicago wins, Atlanta at Chicago, Chicago to the SB.)

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I agree with what you're saying. The opponents defintely factor in to the results. That is true. That said, what you're saying is our defense isn't good enough to stop good offenses. That we should only be expected to stonewall bad to mediocre offenses. If thats the case, I dont see how we can be all too excited over our team and our prospects.

How many teams truly have balance between offense and defense? I think from this point on what we're going to see is that if you're lopsided one way or another, we're going to beat you. You're going to be hard pressed to find a team that plays better on both sides of the ball than we do, consistently. I feel magic coming.

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