[Warfish]

Originally Posted by crasherino

I am always curious about this concept...why does a great defense have to go with running the ball/ground and pound/conservative offense? What is it about great defenses that necessitates a low scoring companion on the offensive side?

It's based upon winning the time-of-posession battle and the turnover battle.

Thought being, that if you have a great Defense (or sorta-great), you maximize that by limiting the opportunities an opposing great offense gets in any given game. Best (in theory) way to do that is clock-chomping via a productive, bruising running game, ball control, and limited risks/turnovers.

If Tom Brady has 15 posessions, he can score 40. If he has 8 posessions, maybe not.

Shouldn't we strive for both a defense that keeps the score down as much as possible along with an offense that scores as many points as possible?

High-scoring offenses usually come with high-risk, turnover-risky, clock-weak schemes that leave your defense on the field for long stretches of the game, give the opponent many more posessions of their own (i.e. shootout) and does nothign to wear down their defense, whilst wearing down your own heavily.

I get that a game plan would be to run the ball, dominate the TOP and keep the score low, when that fits the bill, but what type of defense goes well with a high scoring offense....a mediocre one?

Certainly seems the way of it....just look at all the faildefenses in the playoffs, getting their doors blown off at-will by these great offenses and playig de facto shootouts.

It its an allocation of resources - I guess I understand, but it seems more of a philosophy - you run the ball and then play great defense. How about you light the scoreboard and also play great defense?

They seem mutually exclusive to me.

It's awful hard to have both a great pass-happy scoring O and a great D. Needs massive amounts of talent, a QB who never turns the ball over and has long sunstained time-chomping but fruitful drives, and a defense so good it doesn't end up on the field forever and worn out after your O does all that fast scoring.

Not impossible of course, just real hard.

I'm not (btw) saying Rex's way is the only answer to winning, it's clearly not, and it's clearly the odd-style-out in the NFL today, by design of the NFL itself.

Imagine the Jets with 10 less turnovers each year, and a RB who can actually break one long once in a while (and maybe one more WR worth discussing). Thats what we could/should be, if the QB play (i.e. turnovers, complettion percentage, third down conversion and long sustained drives) can be improved substantially from the past 4 regular seasons.