Quote:I've seen it and it was badly misguided. All defenses face short fields or turnovers/special teams plays that go for TDs. Most defenses also hand some of those back to the offense. The Jaguars defense didn't do that. They were terrible at creating turnovers, and they weren't good enough at making critical stops late in games.

 

You can try to equivocate it by coming up with stats like trying to reassign points to other phases of the team instead of the defense, but the defense was not some strength of the team getting a raw deal from the rest of the team, the defense wasn't good enough, either.

 

Like I said, there's a clear emotional attachment to the guy for some based on what he did in 2015.  It's the only explanation.  Had you actually read the thread, you probably wouldn't have made the implication that all teams deal with short fields at about the same rate because it simply isn't true.

 

Although I didn't compare the entire league in that thread, the most important comparisons are within the division which I did do.  Here's the cliffs notes:  The Jaguars had 23 combined instances (Offense/ST plays that resulted in field position inside the 45 for the other team) of turning the ball over deep in their own territory or ST gaffes.  Four of those resulted in defensive TDs for the other team and 3 more were game ending interceptions (a whole other issue) where the game was still in question and within one score at the time. So 16 short fields plus 7 of what I will call back-breakingly negative Offense/ST plays.

 

The tinhorns had 13 total instances with 3 resulting in defensive scores for the other team.  That's 10 short fields plus 3 back breaking plays.

 

The clots had 11 total instances with 2 resulting in defensive scores for the other team.  That's 9 short fields and 2 back breaking plays.

 

The tacks had 11 total instances with 6 resulting in defensive scores for the other team.   That's 5 short fields and 6 back breaking plays

 

<p style="margin:0in;">The Jags defense clearly dealt with significantly more bad hands dealt to them by their own offense and special teams than any other team in the division by a wide margin and I'd venture a guess they were probably dealt one of the worst hands in the league last year.  If you feel these are made up stats or that 23 is about the same as 13 or 11 or that 16 is about the same as 10, 9 or 5, I don't know what to tell you.  This isn't earth shattering stuff.  Scoring for the other team and handing them short fields loses games.  

The defense needs to get more turnovers for sure, no one is saying otherwise.  However, they were clearly carrying more water last year than the offense or special teams, especially as the season wore on and they might have gotten more turnovers had some of those short fields been longer.  To shift blame toward them and away from the QB, who was responsible for most of those negative plays, is ridiculous.

---