PlayoffsFollow

Don't mess with the matriarch.

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I'm not sure if I have anything particularly interesting say, I'm still dumbstruck over that game. I guess Denver was the traditional pocket-passing team we were designed to beat, I guess everyone discounted that earlier pre-season game against them as "pre-season" and nothing more, I guess 2 weeks of hype was 2 weeks too much, I guess playing SF was the real Superbowl, I guess I'm surprised if anyone else watched that game after halftime.

I'm glad we got the win when we did. Next year is going to be tough with the NFC West the way it is, and us getting the tougher schedule because of the division win. Oh well, savoring the moment while it lasts.

Go Hawks.

This is what got to me, really more than anything else I think.

I wasn't too shocked to see the defense step up. If you told me the superbowl was going to be low scoring I would have been a bit surprised (8 was a bit of a "wow", but defense has been our strength, especially against quarterbacks who like to hang out in that pocket a lot. That would have been Drew Brees' total if not for that missed interception / tipped pass.), but not shocked by any means. The Seahawks point total, well those are numbers we only put up against Jacksonville this year in the regular season, so I wasn't expecting anything remotely like that. Even the 27 points by the offense was pretty solid total for that bunch (thank goodness Denver couldn't tackle ).

Edit:

Also, I think this is my favorite story to come out of the whole thing.



I hope I can do that at 62. SpoilerHeck, I probably can't do that now...

Edited, Feb 3rd 2014 3:07pm by someproteinguy

Um... No.

They had the best defense this year. But every year some team has the number one defense. And, as this article shows, Seattle's defense doesn't stack up that well historically. Even when compared with the most restrictive and recent pool possible (the "since 2004" group), Seattle ranks 6th. That's 6th out of 9 years of "number one defense" teams. That puts them in the bottom 3rd of that pool.

So no. Seattle did not have a ridiculously good defense relative to historical NFL defenses. Denver, on the other hand, absolutely had the number one NFL offense of all time. Hence, my statement.

Did you honestly think differently?

Huh? Shutting down a quarterback is presumably measured by things like say yards of offense and points scored right? And by those statistics, Seattle was pretty mediocre in terms of historical "number one defenses". Saying "there's more to a defense than statistics" is another way of saying "the stats don't show it, but I just feel in my gut that Seattle is the best!".

That's great and all, but what I said can actually be backed up with numbers. Which obviously doesn't guarantee any outcome (cause Seattle won), but it certainly doesn't justify an incredulous response. Doubly so since your response was to me directly speaking about how Seattle stacked up statistically. The statement I made was absolutely correct.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2014 6:20pm by gbaji

The couple of analyses I read over the last week (from random sports stat nerdy people, which I can try and grab links for if I must) would put them somewhere around the top 10 since the merger. Where they fell depended a lot of which metrics you used, how the were weighted and adjusted and what not.

One of the bigger controversies that came up was whether or not to weight the stats based on the strength of the offenses in the league this year, or how exactly best to do that. The league is more pass-happy than its been in the past, and the rules more skewed towards the offense pass game, making it harder to defend against than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Then again, it's easy to over adjust for that kind of thing, and there's more to the game than just the passing attack.

Really the Hawks gave up several games like the Superbowl. The opponents passing numbers looked good on paper (the record number of completions, for example), but the points weren't there. They forced a lot of turnovers this year, 28 interceptions in 16 games, or something like that. That was more the story of our season than anything else. We'd win something like 20-13, and 10 of those points were the result for the defense or special teams, either directly or due to the good field position they gave the offense to work with off a turnover. It went beyond the usual "lucky interception of a bad pass" and became more like "eventually we will pick something off." Sherman liked to talk (well, duh, I think we all know that now...) about them baiting QBs to throw; it was part of their game plan.

Then you pull out a quarterback like Kapernick who can run and throw, and they'd have trouble. Mobile QBs were a pain to defend against, and just the run game alone gave them fits at times this year. They excelled against the Mannings of the world, who wanted to sit in the pocket and throw against our over-sized secondary. They were the trump card for that kind of offense, designed specifically to beat them in many ways.

If you want to say we're in the top 10 of the last 50 years, I wouldn't bat an eye. But were not as all-around strong as we are engineered to counter a specific offensive style, one that's popular in the league at this time. What the LOB can say, is that they utterly destroyed the best passing attack the sport has ever seen, in the biggest game of the year. Think of it this way the Seattle defense outscored the highest-scoring NFL offense ever, 9 to 8.

They'll certainly be remembered for that even if the numbers aren't there.

Edited, Feb 4th 2014 9:27am by someproteinguy

Pretty much.

Exceptional perhaps, they can be in the conversation, but they aren't taking any top honors. They're very much still an open book. What they do over the next couple of years will mean a lot to any ranking on a "best ever" list, in my mind at least. They just had a really big, rather shocking, a victory in a game everyone was watching (well at least for the first half), so that got people talking. Maybe think of it as a strong Psychic Pokemon going up against a decent Dark Pokemon and getting its but kicked. Mewtwo lost to Umbreon, same kind of thing.

Well, that and they like telling everyone they're awesome; which always riles up the natives.

Edited, Feb 4th 2014 2:16pm by someproteinguy