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The Seahawks have a defense that was as advertised at the beginning of the season. I'm hoping Russell Wilson gets progressively better (like last year), as the season moves forward.
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Q. What's the best reason to believe that the 49'ers will win?
A. They have the best team in the NFL. Maybe since... well, I don't remember the last time I saw a team that was clearly better. The 1985 Bears, maybe?
Well, not best team. What I'm getting at is this: take any NFL team and ask what it is worst at -- offense or defense. The Patriots' worst side of the ball is defense, of course; Arizona's is offense. That's obvious.
Compare all 32 teams' worst side of the ball, and the 49'ers have the best worst side of the ball I've seen in a long time. The 2009-10 Packers had terrific defenses, so because they had Aaron Rodgers, they're in the conversation. You know who else is? The current Seahawks.
Flick through the NFL Advanced Stat team visualizations and you will see it's awfully rare for a team to have an excellent "worst side of the ball." For example, here's the 2003 season.
- Better offense = farther R
- Better defense = farther UP
- Great team = R, UP corner
Nobody's in the R, UP corner....
... That's common. (It's easy to be lower left; lots of teams congregate in the lower left Lousy-Lousy sector every year.)
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Q. Why is it so hard to be way upper right?
A. Just to give you a feel for it...
Suppose you have the right to 6 impact players (or, "impact player points," since Tom Brady is worth 4). Where do you put them?
Some teams put all 6 on defense. Other teams put all 6 on offense. How are you going to deploy 6 points to be the best on both sides of the ball? A lot of teams draft and specialize for one side of the football. Really the only logical way to be Upper Right is to have a HOF quarterback, and then put everything else on defense. Bill Belichick seems to attempt this.
A corollary: you get QB-RB-WR trio that manages to stay healthy for ten years ... Aikman in Dallas, Manning in Indy ... and you could focus on defense. But go over the team visualizations and you'll see it doesn't occur much in real life.
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Q. Where are the 49'ers in this "Worst Side of the Ball," currently?
A. You can't draw the map on one game, 2013 (Aaron Rodgers, the best player in the NFL, moved the ball on them in the first week). But here was 2012:
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Even that undersells SF, because their offense may be wayyyyy right now with Anquan Boldin. And! That chart may undersell their defense, since it's involved in shootouts now. Here was the SF defense in 2011, before Capernick brought shootouts to town:
... so in all actuality, the 49ers look more like --- > using the axes on the graph above --- > 16 to the right and 1-2 to the top.
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Q. So it's game over?
A. Nope. And the team visualizations aren't the end of the conversation. We're just illustrating our own opinion, from the third deck: the 49'ers, considered the #1 team in the NFL, are underrated.
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