Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
The playoffs was exactly why we did what we did.
The Titans took the ball at half, threw our defense around the field and simply kept the offense dry-docked. We got four possessions in that second half. The offense didn't do much with them but their margin for error was zero and their rhythm was understandably ****ed.
The problem was that a team went out there and did what the Ravens just did - they said "**** this, we're just going to run it every time" and proceeded to fish our D and keep the O off the field.
For the 2nd half of that Ravens game, everything looked identical. Our offense went flat and our Defense got shoved around too much. Hell, we even got the obligatory FG miss in there. The difference is that our defense got 3 stops on Sunday. It wasn't good, but it was juuuuust good enough to get us that 4th possession with a chance to tie. Last year's defense didn't get a single stop in that 2nd half and that made all the difference.
The defense saw a virtually identical scenario to last season's playoff debacle and it was just enough better under virtually identical circumstances to keep us in it. And the offense, also clearly better, came up with that 4th quarter drive that Smith and company couldn't come up with last season.
The 'why' of what they did this off-season is easy enough. They were simply unwilling to put themselves in a situation where an opponent could go out there and choke the life out of them. They're not much better at avoiding that, mind you. But they were just better enough to pull off the W.
Was the juice worth the squeeze? Probably not. But you can see why they did what they did and there WERE some gains made.
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Except they weren't better at it. That game was a loss under any other scenario. Patrick Mahomes single-handedly won that game. Patrick Mahomes would have won the playoff game last year.