I guess my answer to that would be that Stafford's throws were still accurate and still being completed.DK Sweets wrote:I feel like this argument is at a standstill. I could say "Brett Favre had one hell of a game until his last pass. How do you know the pressure wasn't effecting Stafford?"
We'll go with pressure is a very good thing! I just wanted a few more sacks to help end 10+-play drives and/or incompletions or interceptions being thrown because of that pressure. As I mentioned in my own thoughts above it may have been simply that Stafford is a very tough, gifted, gritty quarterback and if we were going up against Manziel, Bortles or some other QB that the exact same pressure would've resulted in more defensive stops. I do give Stafford a ton of credit for being able to have the trainers tape his arm back on and continue to play as well as he did. You'll never get me to write this about Rodgers, though. I'd hope Griffen would kidnap a Packer, disgustedly wear it's jersey and sneak over to the trainer's table to steal Rodgers' arm.I saw pressure. You didn't see the pressure get there soon enough. We have different takes on it and I don't really know where else to go with that.
Well, first downs surrendered has a cumulative affect. The more an offense has, the more chances they have to drive and score and the more tired your defense becomes. Those first downs put points on the board and kept our offense off the field. As I mentioned before, the Vikings only ran 61 plays. You usually need to have the ball on offense to score For some perspective, Chicago (whose defense is, um, not good) allowed 12 passing first downs to Arizona this week. New Orleans' pass defense (which is also not good) allowed 7 (granted they were playing Tampa Bay).I will say this though: I'm not very concerned with the first downs we gave up. We kept the running game stifled, prevented the big plays, and kept their score low until that awkward final drive. The Lions are too talented to stop everything, so if the feather in their cap was first downs, I'll gladly congratulate them and take the win.
Maybe I'm just too greedy. But I think the Vikings will have a hard time winning games if they continue to allow that many sustained drives and that many first downs on a routine basis.