TwistedHusky":3k5wqvbn said:
Exactly.
Last year our defense slipped.
And without the defense to bail them out repeatedly our offense couldn't even scrape together a wild card.
Because without the defense to do the work all we have is a QB that occasionally runs around in the 4th quarter. Nothing consistent, capable or dependable. Great for YouTube clips though.
First of all, here is the cap breakdown for offense/defense since 2013 (from spotrac):
2013: 52%/39%
2014: 37%/45%
2015: 35%/48%
2016: 35%/51%
2017: 36%/56%
Average Cap% rank for offense: 23rd highest
Average cap% rank for defense: 8th highest
So clearly the defense has vastly out-earned the offense over this period.
I'm not even disagreeing with you that the defense was carrying the load all these years, I just disagree that the offense has sucked because Russell Wilson got paid and he sucks for the first three quarters of games when the latter was only true for 2017 - he was just as bad in the 3rd quarter in 2016 as he was in the first quarter in 2017, which is it?
It's also evident that the FO chose to pay the defense way more than the offense. Now, you can come back and say if we got rid of Wilson and invested in OL, we'd be better off, which I strongly disagree with. Put a mediocre guy behind a great OL (assuming we'd even have that) and you aren't going to get a great offense. See Cowboys 2015 and the Browns when they had Joe Thomas, Mitchell Schwartz, and Alex Mack together for a few years. The 2016 Oakland Raiders looked like an offensive juggernaut behind an elite OL, but were crap as soon as Carr went down.
The problem is either they invested too heavily in defense (which I don't think they did, I loved our defense being historically great and wouldn't change that for the world) or they failed to build a competent OL and lacked quality depth at RB. I definitely think it's the latter. They had chances to sign guys like Schwartz to deals that look like steals right now, or draft guys like Cam Robinson who looked promising out of the gate, but decided to focus on taking on young, raw athletes and having Cable coach them up. Look how that worked out. That is what cost this team. It's baffling to me that people think the main problem is Russell Wilson's contract.