That was the FIRST PLAY OF THE GAME. It was clearly an aberration considering what Lewis did on his next seven carries (jack shit).

Like the abberation with Deshaun Foster? And Quentin Griffin?

I'm not discrediting it. I'm saying AFTER the first play of the game, we held Lewis to 55 yards on 14 carries.

There's a huge difference bewteen 70 goddamn yards and 18.

We never held any of those backs to 11 yards in a span of 7 carries.

Let's look at our major areas of weakness on defense and how our defense has progressed each week.

Week 1: 34 pts Allowed. 199 rush yards allowed (including plummer's scrambles.)

Week 2: 28 pts allowed. 184 rush yards allowed.

Week 3: 17 pts allowed (the defense did not throw the INT for a TD) and 56 total rushing yards allowed.

Week 4: 17 pts allowed (the defense did not allow a KR for a TD) and 80 total rushing yards allowed.

Over that four week span you can clearly see a big jump in defensive performance in the areas we were weakest last year. You have not seen a huge performance by one single player, true. You have also not seen a completely dominant defensive performance, but the Baltimore game was close.

And THAT is why I feel this defense has improved and will continue to improve. Last year even POOR offenses would put up big numbers against our defense. Even poor QB's and RB's would have big days.

That isn't happening this year. Outside of week one we've played good against good teams, and even great against a 500 team and a top 5 back in the NFL. We are stopping teams we SHOULD be able to stop, which we didn't do last year.

Definitely the Special teams coverage.

Actually, you're wrong here. That was the MO in 2002, but not last year. Last year the D was average to dominating against most teams. Where we struggled was against top notch O's (Green Bay, Denver, Minnesota).

I do agree with the rest of your post. We're showing improvement, and its not just because of the level of our opponent.

Oh really?

Deshaun Foster
17(but we throw out the big ones)
-3
6
-3
5
2
1
-2

Total = six yards in 7 carries.

I could go on, because there's plenty of stretches where we shut Foster down. Difference being, Carolina got more chances (because our O didn't dominate TOP), and they stuck with the run. We held Foster to 89 yards on 23 carries..then he ran for 71 more on the next carry. Did we shut him down?

You can't ignore our TOP and the lack of carries Lewis received.

I with you, like I said; If the defense that played Baltimore shows up for the rest of the season I will not bitch. I will not call them the dominate force of this team, but I'll smile when they take the field as oppsed to takin an extra shot to dull the pain (that was called for last year).

They got more chances because we didn't get them off the field when they had third downs. Baltimore was 1 for 8 on third down.

The D against Carolina was also hung out to dry by the offense. They allowed 2.7 ypc in the first half, but were on the field for too long due to crappy O.

The two weeks we showed marked improvement came with improvement from our O. More 3rd down conversions, and better TOP.

I won't argue that our D isn't improving. I'm just saying the 74 yd stat from the Baltimore game is misleading. Lewis ran fairly well against us when he got the opportunity.

Hung out to dry? Yes. But you're admitting exactly what I've been saying all along. Our D benefitted greatly from our O consuming an absurd amount of the clock. Sure the D had to force the punt, but you can't ignore that our O then ate up more TOP than they do in some of their best games.

Sure...but I think if the O had only held the ball for 30 minutes we'd still have been fine.

He had plenty of opportunities in the first half. He did nothing.

Basically our D shut down the Baltimore run game apart from one drive and one carry. That's damn good run D.

Fair enough...I think that had Lewis received 10 more carries he may have lit us up for another 74, judging by what our run has shown late in games when backs get 20+ carries.

It's all speculation, by both of us.