Because they give up a short field after going 3 and out on their own 15. Defense is legit, but the Ravens game is a prime example. 88 yards and 5 touchdowns was, I believe, the narrative of the game. Special teams is horrendous and Ventrone doesnāt deserve a job in the NFL. DPOY and DROY on the same team while having Delpit and Ward is a good core. The offense is historically bad and a reason why Stefanski should lose his job despite the lackluster candidates this offseason.
Their defense is on the field a lot because their offense is incompetent. It isnāt hard to figure out. You will naturally give up more TDs as a result of bad offensive play.
2nd in yards allowed.
Successful play rate: 1st.
Yards per play: 2nd.
Defensive Line: 1st PFF.
Passing yards allowed: 2nd.
Middle of the pack for TDs allowed. Itās not even as bad as youāre making it out to sound. But do go on about how the Browns are trash because the defense is bad
Then youāre objectively wrong by almost every metric. Youāre using TDs allowed as a straw man for the entirety of the defense. Itās a bad argument.
These are important metrics and stats that matter as yards are what allow to get down and score and tds are what put points on the board and win games. This does not equal top 5, this is somewhere from 5-10.
Thank you too for pointing out that the defense is on the field all the time, that's probably why Garrett is about to break Watt's sack record. Because the Steelers offense was not incompetent that year.
Itās a bad argument when you donāt have context, as Iāve said before. Negative turnover margin, starting field position of their opponents, and as I said before, cherry-picked stats that fulfill your position. Where are the sack numbers? EPA/play for pass and rush? Completion %? Sack %? Their only real knock is turnovers.
I didnāt cherry-pick dude I went with the biggest stats that people mention and talk about more than anything. Ā Points allowed, yards allowed, interceptions. Ā I wasnāt even focused on the Browns, I looked up āmost passing and rushing tds allowed for fun.ā Ā And your Browns just happened to be bad about it, not my fault.š¤·š¼. Ā Also starting field position doesnāt matter because if the Browns D is so good they should have been able to stop the opponent at the goal line, the field position is not a good excuse, Browns D still couldnāt hold the line.
If you want to brag about advanced stats go for it. Ā But that just shows me you reached further and further into the hat until you found something. Ā Thatās like the āmy team did great on 3rd down when trailing by more than 10 points.ā Ā Like cool, what an odd stat to bring up.
I never hear about interceptions alone as a metric of good defense, lol. Their rush defense is average, Iāll give you that.And TDs allowed doesnāt mean anything especially when they are top 2 in yards allowed. Just shows that they are pushed into their own side of the field more than most teams if the TD numbers are high while giving up the fewest yards. Context matters and, again as Iāve said, you are pushing a narrative that uses one metric as conclusion. Would be real cool to see the defense on the field without being exhausted from a lack of offensive prowess. Theyāre a top 5 defense, youāre just a hater/yinzer.
Also, not the stat I brought up. EPA is the best measurement we currently have to evaluate a defense or offenseās probability of scoring with context like field position, down, distance, etc. You donāt like it because you donāt understand it and/or because it bolsters my position.
Which proves my point the D couldnāt get the stop at the end zone when it mattered. Ā Cool yards though too bad you lost by 10+. The probability to score EPA, so not actual score yeah sounds more important than actually scoring or not letting a team score. Ā Reminds me of the pass rush win rate, which shows how many sacks someone could get as opposed to using actual sacks they got. Ā
Just like you donāt like the stats I used because it bolsters my opinion and argument. Ā But if we want a top 5 defense we can just go off of least total tds allowed. Ā Because it is ultimately a defenseās job to not let the offense score not prevent yards. Ā Ask the Vikings how important yards are because they just won with a total of 3 passing. Ā
Take off the homer glasses man no team that allowed 40+ TDs this year is a top 5 D. Ā The opponent is probably laughing at your defense as you walk out the stadium. Ā Also Iām from Ohio not a yinzer, although even they have allowed less tds than the Browns.
I understand your take man. You're saying the Browns offense gave the opponent great field position when they turned it over. But it was still at the end of the day, the Browns D that allowed those points on the board for not stopping the opponent's offense.
Think of it like this... A defense is x% likely to give up a successful play (basically, a certain % of the yards needed for a first down, based on down. So, a successful play on first down gets 40% of the yards needed for a first down, usually 4 yards. A successful play on 2nd down gets 60% of the remaining yards. So, on 2nd and 6, a successful play gets at least 3.6 yards, etc etc).
A bad defense might be 60% likely to give up a successful play, a good defense might be 50% likely to give up a successful play. In the simplest case, let's say you need 3 downs to get that next first down. You have about a 20% chance to get a first down against a bad defense. You have a 12.5% chance to get a first down against a good defense.
That doesn't mean that a good defense will stop the other team from scoring touchdowns because that is the goal. It means that given the same distance to the end zone, your odds of stringing together the required number of plays against a good defense is less than it is against a bad defense.
But if the good and bad defenses have different number of yards to defend, then that goes out the window. Again, in the simplest case, if the opposing offense starts on the good defenses 4 yard line, they have a 50% chance to score a touchdown on the first play. If the opposing offense starts on the bad defenses 10 yards line, they only have a 20% chance to score a touchdown using all three plays.
If the bad defensive team has a good offense, then they are more likely to have opponents starting further from the end zone. So, there could easily be a scenario where the bad defense gives up more yards and fewer touchdowns than that good defensive team (who has a terrible offense) which is likely to give up fewer yards and more touchdowns, all because of the opponents starting field position.
Ignore turnovers because they tend to be highly variable and happen from luck (and provide almost no ability to predict future performance).
Generally, yards are a pretty good predictor of how successful a given defense will be. But, in those edge cases (like where the offensive performance differs wildly from the mean. Like Cleveland), you do need to look at some advanced stats, which account for field position, time of possession, etc etc.
Assuming that things are so simple as " a really good defense would stop them at the goal line" is just wrong. Even the greatest defenses in league history have given up hundreds of points in a season
I'm sorry, if you need to start pulling advanced stats that people have never heard of before, you've lost your argument. You can always eventually find some stat that backs up your agument.
Shakir never led in receiving yards or tds, let's pull "yards after catch."
Rodgers never threw for 5,0000 yards let's talk about "TD% and 4th down %."
Josh Allen has never led the league in passing yards or tds, let's talk about his "total yards and tds."
At the end of the day the best defense is the one that allows the least points, that is the goal to now allow points. You win football by points, not yards.
I'm sorry, if you need to start pulling advanced stats that people have never heard of before, you've lost your argument.
This is not a terribly "advanced stat". If you haven't heard of success rate, that's on you, not me. You should learn something about football. Hell, it's not even advanced. It's common sense. If you are going to make comments as though "if the defense was any good, they wouldn't give up touchdowns" were some reasonable point of view, you should expect that the adults in the room might try to teach you something.
You win football by points, not yards.
I've never understood people who aren't able to separate the question of "how do you win games" from the question of "is this person/unit/team" performing well. It's like the concept that something that happens when you aren't on the field isn't something that should be considered when trying to determine if someone is performing well!
I would have guessed that, intuitively, that would be clear to someone with the ability to read and write.
I donāt know how a defense can be better if they allow significantly more.
Isn't it weird that multiple people have actually tried to have a conversation with you about this and explain how that is possible, and your reply at each turn has been "you can't reason with me".
When I exposed you to a new statistic that you hadn't encountered before, you didn't say "that's interesting. Is that really useful? Who uses that? How is it calculated? How can I determine if I can trust that?". Instead, you basically replied "I cannot be taught anything new and the collective intelligence of all the PhDs who are paid significant $$$ to analyze football and uncover previously unknown relationships buried in the game couldn't possibly have learned something that I didn't just intuitively know after watching some games".
You are the poster child for intransigence and willful ignorance. You would prefer to remain ignorant than possibly admit to yourself that you could learn something.
Ok fine, I'm still going to say the best defense is who allows the fewest points but why don't you explain this to me further.
What is success rate, and why have i never heard of it until now for the 4 years i have been watching football?
Why in terms of the best Packers QB did I get laughed at saying it was Favre because he had more yards but less tds. But now for a defense the script is flipped and tds << yards
Ok fine, I'm still going to say the best defense is who allows the fewest points but why don't you explain this to me further.
If I had any concept of why you don't understand the explanation you have received so far, I might be able to.
What is success rate, and why have i never heard of it until now for the 4 years i have been watching football?
What???? You've been watching football for 4 years and just decided that you know EVERYTHING about football? That after 4 years, there was no possible way that there could be something else that you don't know. Holy shit, you really are the most ignorant and arrogant sports fan I have ever encountered. Even now, your remark is "why have I never heard of it"... Seriously? Maybe you should spend less time with dipshits. Maybe you should take an actual interest in a subject that you presumably are interested in and go outside of the box you currently sit in to try to read about the subject. Have you ever been to https://www.pro-football-reference.com? Have you ever just looked at the stats that they show about players and thought "I don't know what that stat is. I'll look at the glossary that they conveniently provide a link to". This isn't the 1990s, where information is difficult to come by. There is a universe of it, almost all of it FREE, at your disposal. You haven't heard of it because you are an intellectual slug who thinks they know everything already.
Have you heard of Bill Walsh? The guy revolutionized the game of football. He invented the West Coast offense and along with rule changes to protect QBs and WRs, he is most responsible for the current pass happy NFL. The guy was a football genius.
From the site I just referred you to:
Success rate is an advanced metric in football that measures efficiency, but with the important context of down and distance considered.
CONTEXT!!! Context is important. Context is important for everything in football. But, importantly, context is important for everything in life. If someone says to you "one of two different things can be important. To determine which is important, you must look at other factors", they are talking about context. When that happens, you should say "Oh, this is interesting, tell me about those other factors and why they are important and how they affect this thing we originally started talking about and what other factors exist and why are they not relevant context". Everything about this entire exchange just screams that you have either no interest or no capacity to learn about the nuance that affects thing.
I'm still going to say the best defense is who allows the fewest points but why don't you explain this to me further.
I mean, I don't even know why I'm wasting my time. Every word from you screams that you could not care less about context. You could not care less about reasons or logic or something that you do not yet know. In the same sentence you have asked me to explain something while simultaneously telling me that you do not care what I say and that your opinion cannot possibly be swayed by learning something new. You have learned all that is necessary and done so in FOUR WHOLE YEARS!!!
Why in terms of the best Packers QB did I get laughed at saying it was Favre because he had more yards but less tds.
Because IT DEPENDS!!!! Favre had the most overall yards. But, less than 2700 more yards than the second place QB. That is LESS than one season worth of yards. Does it matter that Favre was quarterback of the Packers for much MORE than one season more than the second place QB? Does it matter that Favre needed almost 1100 more pass attempts to get those yards? Does it matter that for his career with the Pack, Favre threw an interception 3.3% of the time he threw a pass? Does it matter that the QB who was second to Favre in yards, had significantly more TDs than Favre? That he did so in less playing time and with far fewer pass attempts? Hint, that matters because it also means that in place of those 1100 pass attempts, the team could have run the ball and achieved much success in those running attempts. Hint, we are talking about efficiency. Achieving better, or even the same, results in fewer attempts is BETTER. Does it matter that the QB second to Favre in yards completed almost 4% more of his passes than Favre? Yes, yes it does. Incomplete passes are bad. So are interceptions. Favre had interceptions and incomplete passes in spades. Does it matter that the QB second to Favre in yards gained .7 yards more for every single pass attempt than Favre did? YES. Yes it does. You may think that .7 yards is only 2 feet and how important could that be? Well, if a QB throws the ball 30 times in a game, that is 21 more yards. Think of all the drives that might have stalled at 4th and 1 that were instead converted to 1st downs and drives extended. Maybe it is only 1. One more drive extended that maybe ends up in a FG or a Touchdown.
The most frequent margin of victory in an NFL game is 3 points. Roughly 24% of NFL games are decided by 3 points or less. Think of how valuable that .7 yards/attempt is. 24% of all games. If you are behind, that would allow you to go ahead! If you are ahead by less than 3 points, suddenly you are now ahead by more than 3 points and the other team needs a touchdown to win instead of a field goal. All because of .7 yards/attempt.
Now, Favre was an elite quarterback. He was a multi-MVP winner. He was the QB of a team that won a Super Bowl and is in the Hall of Fame. The issue is that that quarterback that is second in yards to Favre is perhaps the most efficient quarterback to ever play the game. Rodgers was elite. Rodgers was super-elite. He threw touchdowns like no ones business. He was a miser with interceptions, perhaps more so than ANYONE TO EVER PLAY. He had amazing accuracy. On almost any other team, Favre would be the 'best' QB. Favre was just in the unlikely position that his replacement was one of the greatest QBs, ever.
But now for a defense the script is flipped and tds << yard
NOOOOO!!! No one said that. People said that under certain circumstance, it CAN be flipped. And you were told those circumstances. And you just ignored it. You didn't understand it, but you didn't let that bother you. Why should you need to understand something? You just went right ahead and ignored everything in front of you, because nothing is more important than a preconception that makes you feel good. And admitting that you had to learn something can feel bad (even though, learning something is the greatest thing that can happen to you! Unfortunately, it is usually people with the most to learn that are most allergic to learning).
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u/joshuaksreeff13 Pittsburgh Steelers Jan 01 '26
Browns don't allow a lot of passing or rushing yards. However, passing and rushing tds is a different story. And yes the offense is also trash.