Quote:
Originally Posted by O.city
If the defense is better, why wouldn't the offense take more risks? This always makes no sense to me.
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The defense isn't great at forcing turnovers or splash plays.
They're the evolutionary version of the Greg Robinson "bend but don't break" defenses. When the defense is working, it makes teams execute at a high level to work its way down the field one first down at a time.
And ultimately the idea is that with a long field to march down, they'll force 2 or 3 third down chances prior to the opponent getting into the red zone and they'll manage to get a stop on ONE of those.
So the offense knows that teams MIGHT be able to get 40 yards on our defense, but probably can't get 80. In that case, it's important to avoid giving the opposing offense a short field.
If we had a defense that was racking up sacks or turnovers, I'd agree with you. But we don't. Even when this defense was at its best, it was a defense that just ground teams into dust making them try to work their way down the field. So as an offense, you know that you're going to hold the opposition below 17 if you just don't give them short fields to work with. And that we can score 21 without taking chances.