Furthermore, Denver had the 17th most rushing attempt. Carolina had the 1st. Miami was dead last.

There's 2 things you have to do: play defense and run the football. Miami did neither. But Thill is the problem.

Ok, you can do neither of those things but then you have cheat.

 

I think we're exaggerating here based on the circumstances. Yes, Denver won because of their defense. This is similar to the Ravens when Dilfer was the QB. While, yes, having a strong defense helps, these are extreme cases, those two defenses are all world. It's pretty rare to put together a defense that strong, and even harder to keep it together long term due to the cap. So, yes, you can win based on defense with poor QB play/stats... but, that defense needs to be elite most of the time, which is hard to pull off, and a long, long ways from our current defense.

I get the point... Of course a better defense will help Miami win games, but to have a defense that carries your team like that one did last night, and this season, that's because they're one of the best of all time probably. You don't get that, or see that very often.

 

not to mention BOTH of the defenses yesterday were lights out.

 

Nice. So all we have to do is build one of the best defenses of all time and we have a shot at a championship with Tannehill!

Easy enough! LETS GO!

 

Can be done either way with a great defense or a great offense in most case the Dolphins have neither and until we address the issue

 

We shouldn't expect to build an all-time defense to win around Tannehill. It's because I do think a good to great defense would do just enough because Tannehill by all accounts was way better than Peyton this year.

 

Lol have you seen how many holes we have on defense? We need two corners, a defensive end, two linebackers, and a safety. All this while having one guy eat about 22 million in cap space on defense alone.

If we get lucky, we will have a defense of thatcaliber in 2, most likely 3 seasons building through the draft.

But for right now, the easier fix is the offensive line, if at least the offense is able to get rolling we will be competitive every game. Defende is going to take some time to come together and it doesnt help that Wake and Grimes is at the finish line of their careers.

 

That's it?

We need a lot more than that if you want to build a defense that can carry a team regardless of the level of play on the offense...

 

The entire NFC was comically over rated this year. I've been saying it all year and that truth finally manifested itself on the biggest stage. Put Carolina in the AFC from the start of the playoffs and they probably lose round 1. All this hype about Seattle and Arizona being the s*** all year, was f****** hilarious to me just like Russel Wilson and Carson Palmer's performances in the playoffs. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

 

Man... Peyton was baaaad. Made me think I could still do it... at age 51 ;) . Maybe some flag football?

I don't think he has any feeling in his fingers. His motion is ok and can throw it hard sometimes but something is way off.

Carolina should have came out and run the read-option until they ran out of RBs... or someone killed Cam.

Did you guys think that was a catch by Crotchery? That was a tide-turner for sure. Cam sacked... Broncos TD right after.
I called no-catch... but everyone around me did not agree.

If one of these coaches doesn't help out their RT against Miller... they deserve what they get. It wasn't like the 2nd TE or the RB was out there burning it up receiving anyway.

Poorly Coached by Panthers IMO.

Also... Talib is lucky his stupidity didn't lose the game. Boston for the Panthers sure helped his team do so.

 

Uh no... I think you just happened to see their worst performances. Carolina hasn't turned the ball over like that early in the game all season. Carson was absolutely burning it up until he hurt his finger on his throwing hand. Russell pulled the Seahawks from the ashes with his play alone. Turnovers early kill every plan.

Penalties, turnovers, poor coaching decisions, bad ST play... all helped out with losing when that game was just a rotten egg for the most part.

 

The read option dies everytime it faces a a top three defense. The key is everyone doing their assignments and top three defenses tend to have those disciplined players needed to make it innefectual. The read option works in the regular season because you play sloppy crappy defenses

 

The game yesterday could have been played ten times and i think we would have gotten a split between the two teams. All the four teams in the conference championships were about even. Arizona had one terrible game but it stilk doesnt change my opinion of them, they could have competed against Denver or New England just fine.

 

Playing devil's advocate, should't we look more at #1 offense vs. #1 defense matchups?

 

I do not agree. How many times has a top 3 defense faced Cam? EVERYTIME you run the read option there is a mismatch in numbers around the line of scrimmage... sooner or later it works especially if you have an athletic 6'5" 255LB quarterback.

What was Cardinals D rated? What were the Seahawks? Minus the turnovers and a few bad plays... Panthers win anyway.

 

I think this is true to some extent. Arizona is definitely better than they played in that game and I still feel Carolina is worse than they played all season. Not bad mind you...but not 15-1 good. I think if you simulate that season 100 times they come out around 12-4 on average. Still great. Some people were calling them one of the greatest teams of all time though which is just ridiculous to me. In the end I think they couldn't win against the secondary of Denver on a consistent enough basis due to a talent gap between their receivers and the Denver corners.

New England was beaten up and honestly if Manning wasn't a shell of a QB at this point they probably wouldn't have even been in that game. Too many injuries for them to really compete IMO. Not to take anything away from them. Healthy I agree.

Arizona had a bad game...but they are still a very strong team. I agree.

Denver had a great defense all year but they really stepped up. Their offense was pretty terrible this year though.

IMO All four teams had some pretty serious holes which is unusual. There are always holes but IMO all four teams had them to extreme. Arizona being perhaps the lone exception.

 

I disagree. The NFC was over rated this year, simple as that. Did Carson Plamers finger f****** force him to throw the ball into double coverage after a game changing interception? No, he's just over rated, that's the real truth, what a f****** decision to throw that ball lmao. No pressure either, just pure stupidity. Cam and #DangerRuss over rated too.

 

IMo the biggest difference yesterday were the special teams.
Denvers punter was awesome, the one weird return were the Panthers could have killed the returner and the missed FG. You cancel out these plays and the game becomes a coin toss.

 

It's a bit of a stretch to call the Panthers offense read option. It uses it but it's not the main focus all the time. What really killed the Panthers was Kelvin Benjamin's knee injury.

 

17-2 doesn't seemed liked killed anything to me.

 

You are using total yards as your ranking.....which is bogus.

Carolina had the #1 scoring offense in football, that "11th in offense" number is a joke.

 

That is just silly talk. Over-rated by who? You?

 

I don't get this argument. Offense and Defense wins championships. Historically great defenses win what, one, maybe two Super bowls without good to stellar QB play? How many Superbowls did the early 2000 ravens get to. One. How many superbowls has Manning been too? Four. How many of those had historically great defenses. One. Great QBs will last you 10-15 years. Great defenses start to fade immediately. Look at the Steelers. They're lucky they have Ben.

Go ahead don't worry about the QB. You'll spin your wheels forever.

 

They played the AFC South, NFC East and NFC South for 14 of 16 games. Lo friggen l.

 

NFL.com saying the 3 best teams in the "power conference" in the NFL were Seattle, Ari, Car. Too funny, the NFC was super over rated this year and the tape proves that.

 

Who you have?

 

What? You lose this argument and you know it, good day sir. Carson Palmer's fingers lol.

 

Haha... name your top 5 teams?

 

They looked pretty good against every team they played save 1.

Not to mention they were shutting it down offensively much earlier than most.

 

Well obviosly NE and Denver are up there, I'm busy at work but I think last night and the whole playoffs in general exposed the truth about the NFC. It's a lil over rated.

 

Dolphins beat NE... are they in your top 5?

 

Miami Dolphins numba 1. KC dank too, if they were in the NFC, they probably play Peyton in the SB lol.

 

We just need to build a really good defense, doesn't have to be best of all time. There's a clear trend in the playoffs - 10 out of the 12 teams in the playoffs were there because they either had a really good defense or their defense was playing really well at the right time of year.
Denver - elite defense
New England - very good defense (and good offense)
Kansas City - very good defense
Houston - very good defense
Pittsburgh - playing good defense the last month of the season
Cincy - very good defense

Carolina - elite defense
Seattle - very good defense
Arizona - very good defense
Minny - very good defense
Green Bay - questionable defense
Redskins - MEH defense

Rather than just shoot for an elite defense, we just need a very good defense coupled with more growth from Tannehill and the offense (which hopefully comes from Gase + improved Oline).

 

Naw, the QB means everything. Once we remove Tannekill who just doesn't have "it" (he's a coach killer you know) all our ails will be alleviated.

 

I'm not going to say the top NFC teams weren't very strong, but there is absolutely NO WAY you can argue the NFC as a whole was anything close to good this year.

 

I knew Denver or whoever came out of the AFC was winning it this year. I called Denver before the playoffs even began, what a sweat day.