JKool

Memnoch, do not fear for my sanity. I did qualify with "on this point", and I was referring to the claim about the 9ers defense. SFIAH is a fine writer, and has some convincing arguments, but I'm not sucked in (on this point) just yet.

SFIAH, nice posts. I enjoyed them a good deal. I'm still almost on board with the Anti-Shockey sentiment. IMO the strongest arguments are the "cost" argument and the "chemistry" argument. The second hasn't convinced me yet (and might never), and it is hard to tell what the cost will be (yet). However, I like this "cost" concern: Shockey's contract will make it difficult to get substantial (and desirable) contracts with Smith and Colston - those two are certainly worth more than Shockey.

Regarding the "scoring defense", I'm still a bit unclear. Is this just the "points allowed" category? It is interesting to me that such a stat is a good predictor of championship success. It is also interesting to me since I think this stat also reflects the success of the offense (which may be your point, I can't tell yet). It reflects the success of the offense, since as we all know, a clock-grinding offense keeps the opponent's offense off the field. Maybe that is your point about the running game?

So, overall, I'm not convinced that points allows is a purely defensive statistic (like yards allowed, third downs allowed, and the like, are). Thus, I'm skeptical that "scoring defense" is a good indicator of how good a defense is (but I may be misunderstanding), and, in turn, I now question the simple (though I concede there may be a more complex way of understanding this) version of "defenses win championships".

"... I was beating them with my eyes the whole game..." - Aaron Brooks