You can't really blame that one the defense when they were never given a chance to rest. I mean, they had a total of 70 plays. That's a lot for a defense to handle, especially when they're playing on 3 days rest and have key starters injured.
Come on Padre, that's a deflection. Still doesn't change the fact we had problems stopping them. If we're supposed to be playoff-bound and have a top-6 defense, you have to stop the better teams. More to the point than the Bears game was the other one I referenced - where we didn't force the opponent to punt all game. Anyone remember which game that was? My games have blurred into this forgettable season. I even remember the humor comment after the game on the forums was "at least our Defensive Coordinator is in no danger of leaving us for a head coaching job next year"
It was the Ravens who never had to punt. We refused to acknowledge Ray Rice, which was mind boggling.
The defense has really impressed this season. Obviously they haven't been "perfect", but who is? Other than the 1972 team of course.
Some of that was due to not stopping them, though. You can't blame not stopping them all on the offense when our defense is the unit on the field at the time. Eh, I don't have an agenda here; I'm actually satisfied enough with our defense at the moment. I expected more being we grabbed Nolan, Dansby, and with our two 2009 rookie corners progressing... I guess I'm just underwhelmed by Dansby, the corners have both regressed a bit it seems (soph slump?), and Nolan - while he has us ranked high enough - doesn't seem to make enough adjustments when needed, like the Ravens game. I'll admit that the Bears game just seems to have magnified defensive deficiencies since we were blanked. Yes, it was good we kept them to 16 points, but still - allowing almost 60% of opponent 3rd down conversions is NOT good, I don't care what caveats you want to hang over the defensive unit. They had not been on the field for 70 plays at the start of the game, or even at the half - yet we were still struggling to ever stop them.
that really was one of the more mind boggling decisions we had this year. we havent had that many but that one was bizarre