Not ignoring anything and you aren't explaining much of anything. The question was is there Offense versus our offense, not their entire team verse ours. Their offense doesn't cause them to give up more points, their defense does (thats like saying a great defense hurts your offense).
No, it's not at all like saying that. You're pretty clearly ignoring something so I'll explain it in more detail. Yes, their offense does cause them to give up more points. Here's why:
- The speed with which the Eagles run the hurry up offense allows them to run more offensive plays than the average team...far more. It also allows them far more drives each year.
- Because the Eagles have more drives, they have more opportunities to score and more opportunities to put up yardage.
- But like Newton said, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." The equal and opposite reaction for the Eagles offense having more drives in which to put up yardage and score is that their defense had to defend against more drives which gave other teams the opportunity to put up points and score.
- Basically, their offensive philosophy gave their offense many additional chances to put up yardage and score but the effect of that was to put the defense on the field much more often than other teams.
- And if you're still not buying this...I'll quantify it for you. The Seattle Seahawks had the #1 defense in the NFL. Their defense was on the field for 171 drives in 2014. The Philadelphia Eagles' defense was on the field for 212 drives in 2014. Based on their average number of drives per game, Seattle's defense would have had to play 4.8 more games to have as many drives as the Eagles' defense did in 2014. That's over a quarter of a season worth of games.
So yes, Philadelphia's offense DOES cause their defense to give up more points.
Like most teams they choose a direction (O v D) and went for it. Saying their O scores to fast and it hurts their D ingores the benifits of having a strong O. The fact is that high powered O put pressure on other teams - they go for TD instead of FG to keep up, they go pass heavy instead of ballanced to keep up. Heck we all heard the same thing back during the GSOT days from a few detracters - "we score to fast".
Except that's not what I'm saying. It's not about their offense scoring fast. It's about their offense doing everything fast. It gives them more offensive drives than any other team but also causes their defense to defend against more drives than any other team. This isn't the case of a strong offense hurting the defense and they certainly aren't even worth comparing to the GSOT.
Last year, they were an average offense and defense based on per drive numbers. Problem is when your offense has more drives than any other team, they're going to inflate the overall yardage and scoring numbers...but in turn cause your defense to have to defend more drives which will deflate the overall yardage and scoring numbers.
Frankly, I think it's a bad philosophy. But I understand why Kelly does it.
You did get it right in that it is the choice many teams have made - be it Denver, the Pats, or the GSOT. The rams have choosen to go D like the Seattle or the 2000 ravens or 85 bears. A team rarely, if ever, has both a great O and great D and you play to your strengths - for us it is defense so we play to that strength because our O is so weak. We don't play O like them because we can't as effectively. Really if you could take our D and mix it with their O your talking SB easy - top 10 D and O! You wouldn't tone down the O at all, you want to keep pressure on the other team ...make them one sides on O so that D line can eat them alive. Like I say this is what we saw during the GSOT. The trouble with the Eagles is that D isn't good enough to force that situation (and when they do force it they have a tendency to get sloppy - probably reflects the coaches ego).
Except it wouldn't be a top 10 Offense and Defense...not if you're talking about the 2014 Eagles. If the 2014 Eagles weren't running the hurry up, they would have finished outside the top 10 offenses based on their per drive numbers. Unless you're saying they would run the hurry up here...which would be a terrible decision. Because you'd be hurting the stronger unit.(the 2014 Rams D > 2014 Eagles O)
For us, we aren't using the philosophy we use because our O is weak. We're using it because it's an intelligent one to use.
