Originally posted by allday:
that was a pretty lame article by an obvious hack
the pats are pretty good without anything close to a dominant pass rusher.
defense is more about scheme and players who make a minimum amount of mistakes as possible.
Of course a guy who can blow up the qb makes everything easier, but in football the first thing you have to be able to do is stop the run. Always has been and always will be.
The original article's claim is that the most effective sacking defenses played in the Superbowl. If you can achieve that with your scheme, fine. If you can increase the odds of sacks with physically gifted sack artists, than you are more likely to get to the Superbowl. In contrast, there are many truly gifted, shut-down corners, who may be voted into the Hall of Fame that have never played in the Superbowl. The Pats didn't play in the Superbowl last year, even thought they were pretty good on D.
Because of the rule changes favoring passing, I no longer believe that offenses are constructed to run first to set up the pass. In today's NFL, you can now say that it is equally true that the pass sets up the run.
Having watched 2 years of Singletary's "establish the run first" offense, I can't believe that you would say always has, always will. In contrast, most of the successful offenses use the pass to set up the run as much as they use the run to set up the pass.
