that we played better because of Dunta, I am in full agreement that saying there wasn’t an improvement doesn’t pass the eyeball test.

I like writing up stuff like this to get comment and not just do the group think thing, and glad you commented.

I try not to rely on just numbers, but given that there is little left brain writing about the team in the traditional media, I write about them more than I like just to fill a void. I think they are handy to use as a tool. As a check. A starting place for discussion. The Football Outsider numbers are particularly handy because it says where your team is at compared to your competition.

But the problem on mostly relying on what you are seeing is that people see different things. You see a defense down the stretch that is putting the team in positions to win, and I see a defense that gives up early touchdowns and has a hard time stopping the run or the pass.

I spent the whole season looking for hope and progress for this defense…and whether enough of a turnaround might happen that might save Richard Smith his job. And other than the messed up QB situation Browns and Titans at Reliant, there wasn’t much to commend the defense. I wrote previews and reviews for each game, and it killed me to see that whether it was in a win or a loss, so many teams were having career high offensive days against the Texans. Huge days. Fantasy football types knew that starts against the Texans defense were money.

As noted in the blog post, Green Bay, Raiders and Chicago (3 of the last 4 games) had bad numbers defensive games against bad offenses. The MNF Jags game was just regular bad performance, though I will concede that is somewhat inflated some because of the worst prevent defense played in the history of all mankind—and the offense for that game played in top 10 NFL fashion. We can argue back and forth about what we see—maybe Green Bay was an emerging offense, or maybe the Titans in that second game mostly shot themselves in the foot because their QB stinks, their receivers stink, and Fisher abandoned the run too early even though it had been pretty successful.

The Raiders offense is garbage but of course the Texans defense gives up an early TD so once again the Texans offense is playing from behind on the road which can be ugly. (Vikings!) Russell had all day to throw and ended up with an absurd 128.1 QB rating.

By the end of the season, I began rooting for the offense to play each game like they were playing Peyton Manning. To have long, time eating drives to keep the opposing offense off of the field. The Texans offense had some amazing off the chart efficient games at the end of last season, including a 51% DVOA against Chicago. They rolled up 549 yards against Green Bay’s defense.

In any event, I think something we can all agree with is that we are happy that there is at least some hope on defense this year. Changes in key player and coaching positions. Whether those pay off we get to find out, and last year’s numbers or trends don’t matter one lick. Whether the defense was bad to better, awful to just plain ole bad, or awful pretty much all season doesn’t matter.

I think that there were encouraging flashes on defense last season, but not the consistency that we need to see for the team to get better. I just wrote the post because I think there’s lots of happy talk that glosses over the big challenges this team has on defense—that’s a lot of years of sucking to overcome.

For the most part, they’ve made some realistic changes on the defensive side of the ball, and this is the most optimistic I’ve been about the defense in a long time. Actually having some hope is a good thing.

I’m with Stephanie for the most part. The defense was slightly better toward the end of the year. They showed signs here and there, but overall they were just bad the whole year. The defense was pretty good against the Jags on Monday night…but most of that can be attributed to the superhuman effort by Mario setting the tone early. I think most of the defense got better talk was a product of groupthink because of a nice little run of wins as opposed to real progress.

I know some people get all upset when the stats don’t show what they think they should, but they are a useful tool for challenging your line of thought. I remember the first time I read some of Joyner’s stuff after Dunta’s first year or two in the league. He was pretty harsh on Dunta, and I thought he was crazy. Then I went and re-watched some of the games and began to realize that while he was good, he was far from the lock down corner rep he got from his rookie year. A few years ago people looked at you funny if you said something about Dunta not being a top CB in the league….not so much anymore.

To me the most interesting thing in Steph’s article was that the offense had the 5th highest time of possession last year. People always talk about the offense making it easier on the defense by keeping them off the field. We did that very well last year, and still had a horrid defense. We did put them in a lot of bad positions with turnovers though.

I think in general everyone is a little overly optimistic right now…but everyone is this time of year. I think we can definitely compete for a playoff spot this year, but it’s not quite the sure thing most people seem to think it is. If we can get into the playoffs though, anything is possible. I’m confident that with the new personnel and a new coordinator the defense will improve…it would be hard to get much worse.

BTW blame Matt and BFD for having to put up with my long rambling disjointed post now.

but when did Chris Johnson become a burgeoning narcissist?

we WILL be ready come gametime.. that includes dante’… the linebackers… everyone.

with those statistics. Not that I buy their old school mean-based DVOA statistic, but if that’s the game we’re playing, okay. There were only six performances by the Texans called good or bad. 50% of them came on or after week 12. No good performances came before week 8. One bad one was overshadowed by Rosencopter himself. Given a shitty defense, you’re going to say they’ve improved if they give you just some above average games where before they gave you nothing. It’s like a drug addict who starts skipping days on the drug. You call that improvement even if they’re still addicted. End of argument.

Of course, I remember arguing with Jerome Solomon on his blog, saying that there was no reason the Texans defense would improve throughout the 2nd half of last season. My reasons: Richard Smith, Richard Smith, Dunta on one leg, the Corpse and how can you overcome all of that? He argued that the safety play was improving and Dunta was coming back. I wish Stephanie had presented some statistics that proved my point so I could go back to his blog with a big I TOLD YOU SO! :)

all the factors that go into a defense’s play. Not to sound like a puss here, but it’s gotta be tough on a defense when the offense continues to giftwrap the ball to the wrong team. They might as well put a bow on it and write a “thank you for letting us play on your field” card. You can say, well, it’s almost the same thing as a punt, but it sure as hell is not. The defensive players aren’t stupid, and they see their counterparts celebrating across the field. It’s damn demoralizing. Throw in the fact that now the home crowd doesn’t give a shit, and has quit harassing the opposing QB when he’s trying to audible, and the defense is playing with its hands tied. Don’t even get me started about what a failed Kubiak challenge does to the unit.