Defense Wins, Again

You know who’s clued in when it comes to football? People like these dudes…

Yup, these people love defense and, as we all watched last night, defense wins Super Bowls.

Sports handicapper Marc Lawrence put up a great trend when giving his selection of the Denver Broncos yesterday, “teams with the better defense have won 40 of the 49 Super Bowls.” Denver’s victory makes it 41 out of the 50 Super Bowls.

Defense wins, that’s a fact.

So, it’s a bit disheartening that the Eagles didn’t interview one defensive coach or coordinator in their coaching search.

As Gary Kubiak proved, you don’t have to have a defensive coach to win a Super Bowl, but you best have a good defense if you want to increase your odds of winning a Super Bowl. As we wrote in another piece, Kubiak broke the trend of backup quarterbacks being ringless as head coaches. Doug Pederson, you’re move.

The Broncos won with Peyton Manning playing like Doug Pederson back in the day. His numbers couldn’t have been more ordinary (13-23, 141 yards, 0 TDs, 1 INT, RTG of 56.6). Granted, Manning may be the smartest QB to ever play the game so he’s not inclined to make a ton of mistakes. However, last night he could’ve had as many as three interceptions with some poorly and weakly thrown balls.

The main concern among Eagles fans and talk-radio seems to be about who will quarterback the Eagles this year. The more pressing issue may be solidifying the defense for years to come. The addition of Jim Schwartz and moving to a 4-3 is a good start. Fletcher Cox needs a new contract now. While I’m a fan of Connor Barwin and Brandon Graham, they aren’t Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware. The corner play needs to improve dramatically. The Broncos demonstrated how lockdown corners free up the rest of the defense to contain someone as talented as Cam Newton.

Whether Bradford, Sanchez, Foles, Chase Daniel, Wentz, Goff, or Lynch is the Eagles quarterback, yesterday’s game reinforced the fact that defense wins Super Bowls. Anything else is an anomaly.