CRA

Not sure why, but each calculates plays slightly different. Total defense defines plays as pass attempts, plus rush attempts + sacks. That has us at the 3rd fewest plays defended. Drives Against is pass, rush and penalty. That has us at 7th fewest. So I guess the one I quoted is just official plays in the books. Other must be accounting for downs where penalty wipes it out.

2021 NFL Opposition & Defensive Statistics | Pro-Football-Reference.com That's not how I read this. It says only the Bills and Bears defended against less plays than the Panthers defense. Yet we were 9th in penalties. And it has us at 1028 plays.

Gilmore came in on passing downs and erased people. I still wished we kept Gilmore and let Jackson go. I'd rather Horn be working under Gilmore.

Yeah, it's a message board. I'm not going to breakdown all the other 31 NFL teams when I'm simply trying to drive home a broad and general point. I've always said stats only tell part of any story. we weren't the 2nd best D in the NFL last year for example. That's just bogus even if the official stat line might say it. So I maintain, our D stats likely were skewed last year because of our opponents. That's not trashing the D lol. I think they did a great job given the hand Matt Rhule dealt them w/ Sam Darnold. But they were flawed last year and not great. They were good though. But the eyeball test and the stats show they overly rely on the blitz for pressure, and they struggle with teams built to line up and run it at you. Which I don't have added the bodies to solve that. That nitpicking our D obivously, it was good enough last year pending they had a good O. But they had a comically sad O.

it's not pretzel logic to look at schedules and observe that opponents can skew what a piece of paper says about a team on the year. The schedule is why some foolishly thought Sam Darnold was going to be good early on. It was just weak opponents. Sam was still Sam (which was noted when some were pretending he was good after a couple games) some teams are dealt tougher schedules in terms of defending the run, defending the pass, etc. Panthers had a pretty good schedule on multiple fronts last year vs some other teams.

I might of missed it but I would add defensive penalties as area that needs real improvement. We had the 9th most penalties despite having the 3rd fewest plays run against us.

Any of those guys would have been better than Rhule. and if you wanted to lure someone out of college, Matt Rhule wouldn't of made the top of my list there either.

I don’t think it is bad. I think when people start leaning on that “2nd ranked D” narrative that it has to be discussed that it would be very hard to call us the 2nd best defense in the NFL. It’s one of those the stats aren’t telling the truth scenarios IMO. I think the D did very well given the cards dealt against them last year. And Sam Darnold is the worst thing a coach could do for a defense. I also think there are concerns going into this year that we can talk about. Instead of the run defense, I’m probably more concerned about how we overly rely on the blitz for pressure and lost our best pass rusher from last year. We are a Burns injury away from being in potentially big trouble.

Eagles also have a non traditional run game. Hurts lead them in rushing. I think we struggle with teams that have the talent to line up and run at you for whatever that is worth.

Issue with using Horn as a metric is he was only with his for 3 weeks vs slop opponents.

I mean SOS exists. And you can break that down further and talk about specifics about opponents. Some years teams get slated to defend brutal pass attacks. While some simply don’t get that schedule. Lot just comes down to what year it is, what conference and division you get. Luck of the draw. we had a schedule last season IMO that made Sam look better than he was early and one that overall likely inflated how good our defense was. look at the QBs we faced last year. Lot of teams had it way worse and we had tons and tons of gifts. We had a great ratio of bad QBs vs good. You don’t get it like that every year.

Only one man can stop them

We can just name them. I think the Jets, Hou, Miami, Falcons, Giants , Bucs etc overall largely just weren’t very good teams running the ball. You want to argue they simply played great run defenses all year and weren’t weaker rushing teams? eyeball test matches up IMO

I would assume majority of teams didn’t get a schedule stacked so heavily with so many bottom dwellers like us. It was a pretty good schedule to be light on run defense IMO. Just the luck of the draw. I mean, some teams get tougher opponents, offenses, passers, rushers, whatever on the year. We didn’t have a bad schedule last year.

I largely go off what my eyes tell me. Stats generally never tell the full story. I’m not making any real declaration outside of I think our opponents likely inflated how good we statistically might of appeared on paper.

I think our numbers are a tad skewed. I think that is why our run defense is doubted. If team A allowed 4 ypc and 100 rush yards per game and team B allowed the exact same numbers…..that doesn’t necessarily make them comparable run defenses in reality. There are other factors. If team A played the best 17 rush offenses and team B played the 17 worst….team A has a better run D. we played the 32nd, 31st x2, 30th, 27th, 26th x2, 24th rush offenses. That’s basically half the schedule catching the worst of the worst in terms of opposing rush offenses.

Tepper totally gets how he is perceived. He admits to getting on social media and twitter to read about himself and the Panthers.

all we need is for him to move on from a mistake and learn from it. I don’t care about Tepper admitting it was a mistake.

I believe the weatherman about as much as I believe whatever Matt Rhule mutters the next time he steps in front of a microphone.

I don't see it. In 2020 Robbie Anderson had a 136 targets. If CMC and DJ Moore are both healthy. No way Robbie Anderson should get those targets on a team that wants to run the ball IMO.

Best is 2001. Followed by 02 or 07.

I mean, Jacoby is a career 60% passer with 36 TDs vs 17 INTs. I wouldn’t call him straight trash. He a veteran QB on a team that doesn’t need much from the QB ideally. I’d favor the Browns on a neutral field week 1 and that is what the line suggests. Seems about right. I don’t view this as the easiest game on the schedule. Not the best matchup IMO. Which is what football generally is.

Run D OL protection Ability to pressure without the blitz coaching in general * I don’t expect the OL to be very good early in the season and I think a lot of people think that is no longer a problem.

Lots of coaches are nice humans that players like. And the NFL is a talent driven league. Nothing there really to dispute. The number one knocks on Rhule are his vision and eye for things have been bologna. The manner in which he has gone about building things. And he isn’t a good game day manager. I mean he can be a nice guy that players like as a human. That’s not the thing people bash Rhule on.

Yeah. It’s weird. it still reflects us as one for the bottom teams in the NFC. Just not the absolute gutter.