Oh my dearest, learned readers, I'm sad: We didn't finish with even the worst defense (by DVOA) in 2010, much less in NFL history (dating back to 1993). I fully believe the honor would've been well-justified by coaching and a scheme that was embarrassingly horrid...not unlike watching Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold make sweet love in a vat of Crisco. However, my primary driver of this season was to highlight, in a historical context, just how poorly our defense consistently played in such a way as to get the abominable Frank Bush canned. Bush is gone, so now I'm happy! Yay us? After the jump, I'll review where we wound up in a historical context.
First of all, huge props to FootballOutsiders.com and their fantastic work. As a math geek and longtime stat-head, I'm thoroughly enjoying the strides made in the football stats arena over the past few years. Also, thanks to Rivers and the work he does. So, here we go:
| Team | Year | DVOA |
| DET | 2008 | 29.2% |
| DEN | 2008 | 24.7% |
| MIN | 2000 | 24.4% |
| STL | 2008 | 23.7% |
| MIN | 2004 | 23.0% |
Notice anything missing here? Yeah, it's us. We managed to fall to 9th place for worst, thanks almost entirely to Rusty Smith and Trent Edwards. If we face Kerry Collins and David Garrard, I'd bet DilloTex's basset hound we'd be at best #2 overall. Alas, we were able to hold off fantastically horrible QBs, which shot us down the rankings. Jacksonville's 2010 defense was actually worse than ours, and we can blame the last game directly for that switch. For passing DVOA? Well, I'm so glad you asked.
| Team | Year | PassDVOA |
| DET | 2009 | 40.1% |
| JAC | 2009 | 39.8% |
| BAL | 1996 | 38.8% |
| DET | 2008 | 37.4% |
| SF | 1999 | 37.0% |
Nope, we ain't there, either. We managed to fall to 6th place at 36.8%.
However, like I mentioned earlier, the point of this series was to display in a very public way our defensive incompetence (and, for some of us, the incontinence it caused). Frank Bush is gone. Ray Rhodes is retired. And, what I'm most thankful for--David Gibbs is history (I'll get into this aspect in some upcoming posts).
For our final music video tribute for the 2010 defense, I give you my vote for the worst music video of all-time. Frank, you were so bad, you've truly earned David Hasselhoff: