JKool

Once.

The offense should get a score at least every other drive. There are usually two or three drives in the first quarter. So, if they don\'t score once, and they had two chances (roughly), that is the offenses fault.

However, the first quarter is a bit different from the rest of the game, since it is where teams are \"feeling each other out\". If a team doesn\'t score on its opening drive, that can largely be attributed to poor game planning. On the second and third drives of the game, it is harder to pin the blame, but by the fourth drive, it has to be on the players (since by then the coaches should have made the adjustments). While these are sweeping generalizations, it has been my experience that they hold pretty well.

This means that the defense\'s real job is to stop the first drive - they must react and play better than the game plan set up to beat them. If they do this, they have done something impressive. If they don\'t, it is their fault. After the openning drive, it is on both the coaches and the players as far as the defense goes.

This stuff about feild position and defensive blame has recently become interesting to me. It is obviously the defense\'s job to stop the opposing team from scoring. Some times feild position is so bad that there is no hope of stopping a FG - in that case, the FG is not the defenses fault. As a rule, the defense should be given roughly 15-20 yards of leeway to stop a opposing offense, so if the O gives the ball away in the redzone, that score can\'t really be the defenses fault. HOWEVER, if the opposing team gets the ball on their own 40 or deeper, the score, whether a FG or TD is the defenses fault, IMO. Just some thoughts.

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