volsunghawk":309jk4dl said:
Thing is, though, I'm not making an argument for the Panthers' secondary. I'm challenging the idea that it is any more "mediocre" than the SF secondary.
Fair enough. I was just objecting to your claim that the Panthers' "pass D ranked higher than SF's did in pretty much ALL categories."
You listed five of the defensive pass categories, of which:
a) one was wrong, the 9ers are better than the Panthers, but not by an amount that matters at all.
b) four more are also virtually the same.
c) The six additional ones that you left out are all suspiciously the ones that the 9ers are better than the Panthers in, by a meaningful margin on a couple, but again, mostly virtually the same too; kind of a knife to the "virtually ALL" argument though, and definitely gives an impression that in making the post you made sure to keep your finger on the scale.
The only category definitively left standing from your "virtually ALL" argument is # of sacks, which is a front 7 argument MUCH more than it's a secondary argument.
Agreed that the front 7 > the secondary for both teams.
FWIW I think:
Panthers front 4 > 9ers front 3 (not that close)
9ers LBs > Panthers LBs (really not close)
9ers secondary > Panthers secondary (pretty close)
I think both defenses overall are very good. I'm fine with just saying they're both very good defenses, and the secondary is the weakest unit of both defenses too.
