tarlhawk wrote:At the risk of making an opinion that our defense has only been "bad" last year and in 2019 I am fond of when our defense crushed the opposition (2013-2015) that I often heard fans from other teams at work accuse us as a collection of thugs who got away with murder as the refs "looked the other way". I felt indignant about such claims even though one came from a friend who I began to see in a different light...I don't even remember the actual team he supported but it must have been in our own division. He remembered I was once a loyal Dolphin fan and was unaware of my interest as a Seahawk fan since the arrival of Pete and JS (the 2010 NFL draft got my attention). I kinda bristled at his comment without saying much...he singled out Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner as the root of his ire and hated Pete Carroll who he said approved of and encouraged it. I find his viewpoint a bit narrow and perhaps the effort to maximize competition fostered a bit of swagger and taunting (that seems to be frowned upon in our current NFL). I enjoy a good defense and I liked the No Name Defense and Killer Bees and I remember a pair of hard hitting safeties from the Dolphins (Jarvis Williams and Louis Oliver).
I'd start a year earlier, in 2012 when our defense was ranked 4th and we had what I believed to be the best team in the conference that season, especially at the end of the year when we absolutely crushed the eventual conference champions in the 2nd to last regular season game with plenty at stake.
But you're right. We gained a reputation, somewhat deserved as we always led the league in penalties, of being a dirty team not too unlike that earned by the Oakland Raiders back in the 60's and 70's. Sherman and Browner in particular attracted a lot if ire as they weren't very fleet afoot and depended on 'chicken fighting', ie grabbing receivers not flagrant enough to draw a PI or holding but just enough to keep them from getting separation.
tarlhawk wrote:Bad to me is a relevant term...many stats can cloud a point of focus...I single out points given up as a collective reflection of a defense...the unpopular "bend but don't break". Keeping things simple is more objective than subjective...if your offense scores more points than your defense allows...then you should generate more wins. What is bad defense when focused on this narrow view? Is top 15 out of 32 teams "ok" or is our standard top 5 (2013-2016) and 2017 till present bad? The Cap situation and free agency "follow the money" means a GM must balance the offensive and defensive contracts in such a way that winning seasons are sustained in spite of a myriad of obstacles that make no two years alike. The NFL is out of the "dynasty creating eras" and panders to the "anything can happen now" crowd that keeps betting alive and tv viewership tuned in...the "business aspect" doesn't always stay "behind the curtain".
The most popular way to quantify a defense is by total yards. Points scored can be a bit misleading as there's more to scoring than defensive performance, ie turnovers, special teams play, field position, and so on. But only the defense surrenders yards. Of course, no stat is completely fair, time of possession, for example, can influence the yards surrendered by the defense and as we all know, a good deal of that has to do with the performance of the offense. But it's the closest one. Regardless, we were usually ranked at or near the top in points defense as well.
As long as we're talking stats, the one that IMO is most overlook during that era was that we set an all-time NFL record for consecutive games without losing by more than 8 points, or one score. I can't remember the exact number of games, but it seems to me that it was in the 70's. To me, that spoke to our defense as even though we didn't always win, we kept every single game close.
In 2017, we slipped out of the top 10 rated defenses for the first time since Pete's inaugural season of 2010, and it hasn't been the same since, either in terms of statistics, win/loss record, playoff performance, or the good ole eye test. Getting our defense back to that level of play is essential if we want to reclaim the glory years of the LOB.