Chris Hu said:
MTZehvor said:
The better defense, by yards allowed, has lost in six of the past ten Super Bowls (2014, 2012, 2010, 2009, 2007, and 2006). The notion of "defense wins championships" has relatively little historical founding. Teams that can compensate for their biggest weaknesses win championships. Denver won last year not just because their defense was great, but because they had a quality running game and Peyton, despite virtually being wheelchair bound, didn't make mistakes. He only threw one interception all postseason. They compensated for a quarterback with a wet noodle for an arm by not screwing up and by letting their defense win the game for them.
The question isn't "is Dallas' defense too bad for them to reach the Super Bowl?" If New England can reach the Super Bowl with the second worst defense in the league, Dallas certainly can with theirs. The question is "can they do enough to compensate for the relative weakness of their defense?" That question will largely rely on whether their offense can continue do what it's been doing the whole season when playing teams not named the Giants; possess the ball for large stretches of time and give the opposing offense as few chances as possible to expose the defense's flaws.
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Yards allowed is not the ultimate messure of the best defense and better defense its a combination of yards allowed, sacks, interceptions and other forced turnovers caused.
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We can go by those totals, then, if you want.
The better defense, by sacks, has won in 6 of 10. 2008 (Steelers), 2009 (Saints), 2011 (Giants), 2013 (Seahawks), 2014 (Patriots), and 2015 (Broncos). Slightly better, over 50%, but hardly a guarantee that you will win a championship.
I'm going to compile turnovers forced on defense into one stat, because looking up individual fumble/INT totals is pretty time consuming. The better defense by turnovers allowed won in 2010 (Packers), 2012 (Ravens), 2014 (Patriots), and 2015 (Broncos). Only 4/10 this time around, so we're back to under 50%.
Admittedly this isn't a "combination" of measures; it's each measure individually, but it's hard to imagine any kind of combination measure where defensive quality winds up being a good sole predictor of who will win the Super Bowl. You wouldn't even get over 50% unless you started weighting sack totals extremely heavily, and at that point it's just selectivity bias.
