Super Bowl XLII Preview, Part II

In my earlier Super Bowl preview, I broke down the quarterbacks for the New England Patriots and New York Giants. To no one's surprise, there was a huge edge given to Tom Brady over Eli Manning. Even if you're a crunkid (crazy/drunk/stupid) Giants fan, you have to admit that New England has a slightly better quarterback. And when I say slightly, I mean slightly by the width of the Atlantic Ocean.

So now that we've agreed on who has the better quarterback, let's move on to a subject that I can't quite get my hands around lately and that is each team's defense. I say that I can't get my hands around this subject because by the way people are talking, I would have guessed that the Patriots defense totally stunk. It just doesn't make any sense to me so I started running the numbers and even I was surpised by what I found.

There are four major defensive categories that are used to judge each team's defense: yards given up, rushing yards allowed, passing yards allowed and points allowed. Here's how the two teams rank head to head:





Sorry for the fuzziness of the graph but cut me some slack here, I'm still learning and haven't quite figured that part out yet. Anyway, the Patriots take three of the four categories and only lose the fourth category in rushing yards allowed by .6 yards a game. Like I said, I just don't understand why the Patriots defense is getting such a bad wrap lately. Are we as good as we were in 2001 or 2003 when we had to rely on the defense much more because we had a sketchy offense, at best? I'd definitely say no but we're also a much different team than we were then, which was comprised of guys like David Givens, Deion Branch, Troy Brown, Patrick Pass, Doug Gabriel, Christian Fuaria and Reche Caldwell playing way too many offensive downs for us. So the defense doesn't need to be great, even though it's the fourth best overall in the league based on the number of points given up. And do I need to point out that the Giants, on average, give up nearly five more points per game than the Patriots? But by the way everyone is talking, I would have thought that the Giants were lining up a bunch of Lawrence Taylor's on defense.

To get a little better sense of where I'm going with this, I went back and looked at just the last five games of the year for each team so that I could put this into a little bit better perspective. I added up the number of points each team has given up and came up with 110 points given up by the Giants and 84 points given up by the Patriots, which means that the Giants are allowing 22 points a game (on par with their season average) the last five games while the Patriots have averaged 16.8 points given up per game over that same time frame which is actually slightly better than their overall season average.

I'm not sure how valid my next argument is in the grand scheme of things but I was trying really hard to find some type of silver lining in the stats that would help me better understand why people think that the Giants have the far superior defense. Here's what I did- I added the ranking of each of the four defensive categories together for a big picture view. The Giants total was 43, while the Patriots total was 20, which would benefit the Giants if the object were to have a high score. However, the objective is to have the lowest score so once again I'm left believing that the Patriots have the superior defense. It's also worth noting that there's quite a big difference between 20 and 43. Although, again, I'm not quite sure how valid that overall argument is.

I've said before that I'm extremely concerned about our secondary giving up big plays, especially on third down. And especially to mediocre quarterbacks who tend to have huge games against us. I've mentioned that these guys have looked like they're getting old before our eyes, especially Rodney HGHarrison and Tedy Bruschi. But we also feature an incredible pass rush that features Richard Seymour, Jarvis Green, Adalius Thomas and even a blitzing HGHarrison who can come in a get a sneaky sack or steal an interception just as easily as he can make late hits out of bounds.

To be honest with you, I really feel like I'm going easy on the Giants here, too. I mean, their opponents average 207 yards passing against them while the Patriots average 295 yards passing a game. I don't see that adding up to a good thing for the Giants, especially when you factor in the play of each team's quarterback and the amount of playoff experience they have.

In the next few days I'll have a comparison of the offense for the Patriots and Giants, including putting the running games head to head, as well as the wide receivers. I've started doing some of the research on this one already and it's not looking good for the Giants (this is turning into a running theme, I think). Stay tuned.