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Jon Gruden would approve of Sarkisian's analysis of what makes a good defense |
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Posted by: Pete Roussel on August 7, 2012 Jon Gruden told the New Yorker in December, "You know what I hate, man? Guys that you know haven't seen the film: they just quote a bunch of statistical bullshit." So when Gruden wakes up at 3:17 am on Wednesday morning, I hope he reads this story about Steve Sarkisian. A reporter asked Sark following Tuesday's practice in Seattle, "It seems like 20 years ago, a shutdown defense would give up 40 or 50 points in a season. In this climate with all of these offenses, what is a successful defense now? What do you want?" Sarkisian responded, "I think sometimes off the numbers teams give up are a bit skewed with so much of the up tempo game that's going on and teams running no-huddle. Sometimes teams are not as concerned. Of course, they want to stop people, but it's almost hard to compare. Everybody wants to compare offensive numbers, too. Our conference is a very offensive oriented conference, not that we don't want to play great defense, there's just really great offenses, there are good players, there are good coaches." "(It's) just a little different than some of the conferences around the country where they are defensive oriented conferences. So it's hard to compare apples to apples. The good defenses are the ones on the teams that are winning. Ultimately, I think that's the way you compare it. The teams that can get the critical stops in the fourth quarterback, create turnovers, get after the quarterback, and stop the run." Gruden would be proud. By the way, I'm 100% with Gruden. It bothers me when people talk about irrelevant stats as it relates to winning.
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