Offense or Defense?

here’s been a lot of talk about individuals lately, first Shockey and Strahan, and now Burress. So, as a change of pace, I thought I’d write about a team issue. What’s more important, offense or defense? Sure you have to have both, but are they equally important?

via i16.photobucket.com

Consider this graph of the average, 1990-through-2007, points allowed per game by defenses (on the vertical axis) versus points scored per game by offenses (on the horizontal axis). The graph is divided into four quadrants representing above and below average points per game. So, for example, the Giants had an above average defense and a below average offense for the period 1990-2007.

Of the 32 teams in the league, 21 made it to a Super Bowl between 1990 and 2007. Of those 21 teams:

• 8 went once and lost
• 5 went once and won
• 3 went twice and split
• 2 teams were undefeated (Dallas 3-0; Denver 2-0)

The Patriots had the best record at 3-2. The Bills had the worst record, having lost 4 times to 3 different teams (Dallas twice, New York, Washington). The Giants had 2 wins in 3 appearances; not as many appearances as Buffalo but 2 more wins.

Now consider this table. The 13 teams with both above average (i.e., strong) offenses and defenses appeared as one of the 36 participants and won the SB 61% of the time. Strong defenses appeared and won SBs 10% of the time more than strong offenses. But there’s a catch, there are a few more teams with above average defenses. When you adjust for the number of teams, strong defense still hold an edge but only by about 2% to 5%. So the defensive edge isn’t as great as we might think, at least over the past 17 years. In fact, it’s not statistically significant. But significance aside, even this slight edge might be important.

What is interesting is that having an above average unit, either offense or defense, is better that having both units be below average. So if the salary cap limits your spending, put all your chips on one side of the ball.

Now, lets get back to complaining about Jeremy Shockey.