Driving the Lane: Defense is key

To all of you who are shocked by Stanford University’s upset of the University of Oregon Thursday night, I ask you: Why? How could you not see this coming? First off, the exact same thing happened last year. More importantly, this happens to every great offense in any sport. There is always a game in which they struggle. And if you don’t have the defense to keep you in it, you will lose.

Maybe it was hard to imagine that the Ducks wouldn’t get on the scoreboard until the fourth quarter. I’ll give you that. But this offense was not going to keep up at the pace that they were going. There was going to come a point where they would have to win a hard-fought, close game. This was that game, and they failed. Their defense and ball security proved too weak to win this type of football game.

From the makeup of this team coming in, it should come as no surprise. One-dimensional teams with high-powered offenses cannot win championships in any sport, and that’s not to say that you can win with defense alone either. You obviously have to be balanced. But the best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a good defense. We have been shown time and time again that a great offense cannot hide deficiencies on the defensive side of the ball.

Unfortunately for me, one of the best examples of this is the New England Patriots. Every year, we have a top-three offense (Well, maybe not this year, but tell that to the 55 points we laid on the second-ranked Steelers pass defense). But eventually, high-powered offenses are slowed down. If you can’t win a game in the teens or low twenties, you’re screwed. That’s what’s happened to the Pats in recent years.

I challenge you to name a team that won a championship in any sport simply on the back of their offense. In college football, the exact opposite is happening. The University of Alabama is dominating the sport because they have the best defense in the nation every year.

Remember when the Tigers of Auburn University ran the table in 2010 and won the National Championship? Their offense was incredible. They had the best player in the country in Cam Newton. They put up 49-plus points in half of their games that season. But do you also remember the score of their National Championship game? It was just 22-19. Their offense wasn’t great. But their defense was able to carry them past, ironically, the Oregon Ducks. Their defense was tested, and they came through.

In fact, 12 of the past 13 National Championship game losers have scored under 25 points. This shows that defense definitely still wins championships in college football. There is no way to hide it. If you have a bad defense, it will eventually be exposed and you will lose. That’s exactly what’s happened to Oregon. They couldn’t get it done on a day when their offense struggled.

In terms of college hoops, Indiana University and Duke University both had spectacular offenses last season. They both averaged near 80 points per contest. But I don’t remember either of them in the Final Four. Indiana scored only 50 points in their tournament loss to Syracuse University. They found themselves in a rare low-scoring game, and couldn’t get it done. Duke scored just 63 points in their tournament loss to the University of Louisville. Their offense struggled a bit, and they couldn’t stop a nosebleed against the Cardinals. Offense can’t win it alone.

Let’s look at the NFL. Sure, it took the most surprising, lucrative and arguably best month by a quarterback ever from Joe Flacco. But the Baltimore Ravens wouldn’t have won the championship last year if their defense didn’t have a resurgence behind the return of Ray Lewis, allowing them to hold the Patriots to just 13 points in Foxborough (God, this is painful to write about).

The 2009 New Orleans Saints are the last example of when the best offensive team in the league went on to win the Super Bowl. But don’t forget what their defense did in the playoffs. They wouldn’t even have gotten to the Super Bowl if their defense didn’t force five turnovers against Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Championship Game. The defining play of that season came on the defensive side of the ball when Tracy Porter picked off Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl. They didn’t win the Super Bowl with just that great offense. It took an incredibly opportunistic defense. Defense still wins championships.

This past month’s MLB playoffs may be the best example of all. Sure, the Boston Red Sox had the best offense in baseball in the regular season. But their hitting was downright awful throughout the playoffs. Our shortstop literally swung with just his top hand on one of his many strikeouts. But it didn’t matter. He played some of the best defense at shortstop I’ve even seen. On days where our offense couldn’t do anything, our pitching and defense picked up the slack. That’s why the duck boats stormed through the city last weekend.

Oregon is just the latest example in a long line of high-powered offenses that were eventually shut down. Like it or not, defense still wins championships. You don’t have to be the ’85 Bears, but you have to be able to win a low-scoring game. Offense cannot cover up for a terrible defense forever. Eventually, you will be exposed.