NE and GB are not the two worst pass defenses in the NFL

NE and GB are not the two worst pass defenses in the NFL If you watch/listen to enough sports shows you might start to believe that GB really has the 2nd worse defense in the league. All the reams of advanced stats available to these shows and they still quote cumulative yardage as the defining measure of a units quality. When you lead by 3 TDs in a good chunk of your games you tend to give up lots of yds passing. It's not now, nor has it really ever been, a good measure of a defense. I like to look at the defensive equivalent of explosive plays, sacks and ints to judge a teams pass defense. Plays that cripple an opposing offense mean a lot more than giving up chunks of yds in garbage time. I weight an INT twice that of a sack and get a very crude # I use to put things in a little better perspective. Here are the remaining playoff teams and their Crude Pass Def Explosive Play rating. GB 91 - 29 Sacks/Ints 31x2 SF 88 - 42 Sacks/Ints 23x2 NYG 88 - 48 Sacks/Ints 20x2 NE 86 - 40 Sacks/Ints 23x2 Balt 78 - 48 Sacks/Ints 15x2 Hou 78 - 44 Sacks/Ints 17x2 Den 59 - 41 Sacks/Ints 9x2 NO 51 - 33 Sacks/Ints 9x2 Notice that NE would not rank dead last either if you give things beyond cumulative yds some weight. NE plays defense to the situation and giving up some yds underneath is not the worst thing that can happen in many spots. Their turnover ratio is #1 in the AFC by a wide margin. They are +17. Next closest is Hou +7. In the NFC SF is #1 with +28 and GB is #2 with 24. No one else in the NFC is even close to those two. #3 Det was +11. Not saying that this stuff trumps the yardage stats, just that it should absolutely count somehow towards evaluating the strength of a pass defense. Taking it to an extreme to illustrate how absurd gross yds passing can be, a few years back Fla International went two years (2006-2007) running where they went 1-23 W/L. In 2006 they had the #4 ranked pass D if you used yds allowed as a barometer. They lost every game that year. Were they good or did teams just not need to pass vs them? It was during this time I decided to pay little/no attention to cumulative yardage totals without adding some kind of filters. NE and GB defenses are not nearly as bad as the talking heads would have you believe.

Excellent post. It all helps and this is unusual information to be injected into weekend decisions. Thanks.

Couldn't agree more regarding cumulative yardage and even points allowed, but FrankB doesn't your formula not take into consideration the same issue as those that bash GB and NE defenses in that any INT or Sack when up 21 points doesn't really factor in how good of a defense you have either. What I would like to see is stats based on how a defense performs when a game is still in doubt. Not sure where you would find something like that.

Starting with ESPN's QBR as a benchmark, creating a defensive rating shouldn't be too difficult. If there are things that make the QBR worthless, then don't include them. But theoretically the things that make QBR low should be the same things that make a defensive rating high, in terms of weight of INTs and sacks.

Also, if you score 30+ points per game and often have 2 minute drives your D is on the field the whole game.