If the D "wore down" it was in part because of the O but also in part because they were totally unable to get off the field. Buffalo marched down the field with a 7:11, 12-play TD drive when the D was fully rested at the beginning of the game. Only on two drives was the D able to get the Bills off the field in fewer than eight plays, and one of those was the last drive of the game where the outcome was settled.
Not all 16 point defensive performances are equal. Usually, that's an excellent defensive performance. Yesterday, the D was bad and still allowed only 16 points.
I thought Taylor played a good game. The defensive game plan seemed to be centered around making Taylor complete underneath throws accurately and consistently enough to sustain a drive and he did a good job of it. Also thought the D played well in the second half, particularly given the time of possession advantage.
I dont think it was a strong performance by the defense or anything. They didnt get a lot of pressure and were mediocre on early downs (bad first half, pretty good second half). But it was the kind of defensive performance that usually wins with a Brady led offense. Id classify it as more uninspiring than bad.
Two concerns on defense, to me, are 1) the front seven hasnt done a good job getting pressure outside of the Houston game. They are getting almost no pressure with four and even when they blitz they arent really getting there (or the offense has a good play on, like on the Bills TD yesterday). Hard to see how this can be a top five unit or w/e without consistent pressure in the QB
2) Ive been trying to think about turnovers and how to think about them
Biggest hallmark of BB/Brady teams has been winning turnover battles, they do that every year.
Outside of turnovers, I think this defense (while not quite the elite unit we'd hope for) has gotten much better over the last several years, but they aren't getting turnovers the weaker units did earlier in the decade.
Last year they were 5th, which is actually low for a BB/Brady team (3rd, 8th, 3rd, 1st, 3rd, 10th, 3rd, 5th in the other Brady/BB years, +7 lowest since 2009), but 22nd in takeaways.
This year, early, and turnovers correlate with a good offense and playing from ahead, but the defense isn't taking the ball away very much (2 of the fumbles in the Houston games were on special teams, which obviously count for the team, but not as much in figuring out how to evaluate the defense)
(Buffalo -1, 0, 1)
Houston +3, 3, 0)
(Miami +3, 4, 1)
(Arizona -2, 0, 2)
Turnovers can be sort of fluky, so I don't know if there's anything to take from this, but the defense hasn't been taking the ball away as much lately (takeaways since 2010: 38, 34, 41, 29, 25, 21)
Could be good news (defense can expect to get more turnovers going forward, I didn't get a chance to dig through fumble/recovery stats), bad news (defense doesn't force as many turnovers as they used to), no news (team just ran white hot for a few years, nothing much to take away there).
