xan

While I haven't finished my analysis, and I hope you considerate posters will help pose pressing questions that will get to more truth, I've discovered the following:

I'm going to focus on LOSSES only, because I'm going to assume that it was a joint effort in wins (on average) and that to get better, one must focus on where things went totally wrong.

In 8 losses,

1st drives had 2TD's, 2 FG's and 1TO
2nd drives had 4TD's, 1FG and 2TO's
Drives 1-5 had 11TD's, 8FG's and 8TO's
Drives 6-10 had 13TD's, 8FG's and 2TO's

Short Field Scoring
6 TD's (3 in 1st 5 drives)
5 FG's (2 in 1st 5 drives)

Offense gave up 2 TD's in 1st 5 drives

When down by 13 or more:
7 TD's
6FG
986yds Total Allowed (30% of all yards Allowed)

What I think this means:
When the game is close, the defense is pretty good. In losses that weren't blowouts, the defense showed up. In losses where the offense doesn't show up, the defense looks even worse.

I'm going to argue that points and yardage given up in the 2nd half when down by 13 or more points are irrelevant for evaluation purposes. There were four games AZ, DEN, SD, and CAR where the slow start and inefficiencies of the offense make this a reasonable assertion. In all four of those games, the offense gave up a score and/or a short field touchdown plus a field goal. That's an average of 16ppg that the offense caused in those 4 games. (not to mention the 4 red zone turnovers in those games)

Against MIN, 3 first half turnovers and 1 short field TD, and still down 7 means that the D was looking pretty good in that one, yardage aside.

So, in 5 losses, the Offense played for the other team, at least statistically, for half the time. Does that qualify to assess the offense 40% of the defensive blame?