Interesting Thought

I'm going to go light on the celebration of yet another World Junior Championship for Canada this morning. It was a fun game to watch against Sweden yesterday, but there's no question that the games of the tournament were the wins over the US and Russia last Wednesday and Saturday. Those two will go down as a couple of the most exciting hockey games I've ever watched. But congrats to the boys and I hope that had fun celebrating last night!

Now for the interesting thought of the day ...
I read a statistic this morning that the Detroit Lions only had 14 passes defensed this season. That means, that less than once per game, the Lions' defensive players did something proactive to break up a passing play (as opposed to the QB just missing with the throw or the receiver just dropping the ball). And that got me wondering, if the whole group of defensive backs didn't even manage to do what they get paid for once per game collectively, would the Lions have been better off without them? I can think back to a few of the games (against Atlanta, Carolina, Tennessee, etc) where Detroit gave up well over 200 yards rushing and truly got beaten by the run. Since those corners and safeties weren't doing anything to break up passes, would the Lions' defense perhaps have given up fewer points by just putting 8 or 9 or 10 guys in the box and focusing on stopping the run? It's just a thought, but I think with some better coaching, this team could have at least squeaked out one win.