You're not counting games we let up 20 points or less by our d (3 of them) and we still lost, or games that the offense had multiple turnovers on our side of the field like broncos, and panthers where we would have won had we not done that. That is 5 games. We had 9 losses, unfortunately this year the theory that it is all our D's fault is just not true. Most years it has been, not this year

I counted them. I'm not saying the O didn't lose a few, they did. I'm also including the games we won not just the losses. The D would be responsible for 5 out of the 9 losses and a quite few more if not for the O. We should have finished in the 11-5 range, 10-6 at worse. Our D needs good coaches. I look at the SD game as pure luck winning it, without the firepower on the O we would be 5-11. Thats where I picked us to be sadly. Our D played 3 good games out of 16, not every team the D went against had good O's and those teams averaged their ppg or above their ppg against this D and thats not a good thing. There's a reason the D ranking is near the bottom.

I just provided 5 games we lost that had absolutely nothing to do with the dense, that only leaves 4

Our O did screw up in games, they ran into a real D that slowed down the O to a crawl but these are the games our D game plan has to be up to par to win, they were not. There were some bad games by the O that there wasn't anyway to come back from(2) in my opionion and should have been (3) but SD blew chunks in the 4th qt and we did. In all honesty with a good D we should be 11-5 right now. We have been screwed for years as fans by never putting a consistantly good D on the field each and every season. We should of had our dynasty and banners hanging everywhere in the dome. I totally blame the D in every way for this.

We would not have had a dynasty with a better defense. You completely underestimate the other QBs and the fact that Brees loves to throw interceptions more than Brady and Rodgers. And there was NO WAY we would win on the road against a west coast team in the first two rounds. Our offense does not have a advantage on other offenses like before. This offense with 2009's defense would have lost to the vikings in NFCCG in 2009. Brees has not proven he can win on the road against other elite teams in January so how do you know what we can and cannot do? The oline was not gonna block any better if we did get turnovers on the lions. And what kicking two extra field goals is 19 points. The lions was held to five field goals. You want a disciplined team like Denver to turn the ball in the redzone? That does not happen with teams like that. KC is not going to do that crap either. On three days rest, you're not going to disrupt Cam Newton especially after a game against Denver. 2009 was a fluke for turnovers. We did not replicate that in 2010 with the same players(minus Fujita).

Tell me something you actually believe we could have a defense like Denver? If you do, you need to get your eyes examined. Only top 10 defenses hold good offenses to less than 20 per game. And what's the point of having SP on the team if we want Brees to do what Russell Wilson can do off of turnovers? It's not hard to score off of turnovers for most teams in the league. All Payton is is a clipboard holder. He doesn't motivate players on the sidelines or any of that stuff like a mental coach. If we don't want to be the feared offense in the league we used to be, then get a defensive head coach. SP did not coach this team to score 20-25 ppg or have 13 point first halfs.

I hate to burst your bubble but if we fielded a D in the 13 to 17 range we would be scary. The only reason the O stuggled was Payton not sticking with the run (ever) and fixing the G position. Remind me where this Dennis Allen led D ended up again?

I get we're all frustrated, it was a tough season. Fact is when you look at the entire season, all 3 phases of the game (offense, defense and special teams) had stretches where they let the team down. And that comes down to coaching.

I posted the offensive numbers to show some that were putting so much of the blame on the offense that while they had their ups and downs there's plenty of blame to go around. It's tough to not point to the defense when they're 31st in the league in points allowed and the offense is 2nd in the league in scoring. Now I tend to be someone who blames the defense more so than the offense but I'm not giving any of them a pass. Another stat that stuck out to me was that we won 1 game all year where the offense didn't score 30 (25-20 against Seattle). The defense at some point has to win some games where you only score 20. Every other team in the NFL won at least 1 game where their offense scored 24 or fewer points.

I know some want to point to turnovers as the reason the D struggled, our offense was 19th in giveaways, our D was 17th in takeaways. For the season we were -3. Our offense did have too many turnovers and our defense didn't force enough. Again, total team effort.

And while I'm posting about the offense and defense I can't get over how bad our special teams was at times and cost us dearly. They definitely didn't do much to help the team.

Looking back at the season, we were just out of sync all year. When the offense was rolling the defense couldn't get a stop. When the defense started playing well the offense went into a funk. I'm not going to blame one side of the ball or the other. I simply want to point out to some that are throwing the offense under the bus that there was plenty of blame to go around. And I'll say it again, when you look as inconsistent as we did all year in all 3 phases of the game you need to look at the coaching staff. This coaching staff hasn't gotten the job done for a while now, 7-9 in 4 out of 5 seasons shows it.