Quote Originally Posted by raycafan View Post
The thing that is being forgotten here about the elite defense. If you compare it to the other 32 teams in the league then we have one of the elite defenses out there. How many other teams can you say have that much of a better defense than we do. Not counting the stats of turnovers and yards(I know the things that count) would you rather have a defense like the Bucks, Eagles, Cardinals. Though they give up drives and at times can't get off the field. I for one will take our defense over more than 85% of the rest of the league. So to me that makes them elite within top 15%. Imo

That is hard to say, because we all know our own defensive players so well (watching week after week). If I did watch another team as well, I might be able to compare. So of course we probably wouldn't trade our D for another, but that doesn't mean they're especially good. Let alone elite.

The stat that can't be underestimated is takeaways. It (our takeaway deficiency) may have not reared its head in the last couple weeks, but it (giveaway/takeway) is THE stat that probably most correlates with winning and losing. And it isn't a 2013 trend. We have been bad to woeful in this category since at least 2011.

We aren't even close to elite.