Pass the correct adage, please
Offense versus the defense
Richard Linde, 30 August 2006

As the old adage goes, the offense sells tickets, but the defense wins championships. We learned this in Pop Warner football.

That adage seemingly bodes well for Tyrone Willingham and his Washington Huskies this season, since Willingham returns nine starters to a defensive unit blessed with speed and depth. If the Huskies can shore up their secondary, they could win more of their games than the media expects of them this season.

Stop the presses and let's 86 that defensive adage from our gray matter. With our Dawgs and their potential for success on the gridiron, there is always a kicker.

Conference statistics from last season seem to say that having a good offense is more important than having a good defense. (Coming up with another adage is left to the fanatics.)

How about: the defense is for show, the offense is for dough? You can do better.

Last season, the Oregon Ducks led the Pac-10 in total defense. Conference champion USC which led in total offense beat the Ducks at the Ducks' own bailiwick, 45-13. So much for Oregon’s heralded defense -- defensive tackle Haloti Ngata (number 12 pick, NFL draft, Baltimore Ravens) notwithstanding.

Defensively, UCLA (10-2) and Arizona State (7-5) finished ninth and tenth in the conference, respectively, but both finished in the top half offensively. UCLA beat Northwestern, 50-38, in the Sun Bowl, and Arizona State beat Rutgers, 45-40, in the Insight Bowl, both Pac-10 teams putting a bundle of points on the board, while surrendering enough of them, otherwise, to get beaten.  

The Bruins ranked 113 in the nation in total defense last season, while the Sun Devils finished 114 out of the 117 D-I teams.

Washington (sixth in total defense, ninety-fourth nationally) had a chance to win its games with UCLA and Arizona State going into the fourth quarter, but failed to score in the last stanza, giving up a combined total of 34-fourth-quarter points. 

So, is the offensive side of the ball the most important aspect of a team? In the Pac-10 that seemed to be the case last season.

That notion is buttressed by Willingham, who, last Monday, said that the most important unit on the field is the offensive line.

Having a good offensive line is one way to reduce turnovers and, of course, the defense rests because of ball control. You can’t score without the ball. I love quoting these adages, since they seemingly prove a notion without substantiating it – although the last cliché doesn’t need verification.

Stop the presses. Since turnabout is fair play, let’s kill our new offensive cliché (e.g., the offense wins championships?) with, say, Hamlet’s bare bodkin. We’re in to wishy-washiness on this site, and Hamlet was as vacillating as they come.

In search of an adage:

On the offensive line, with 42 starts (out of 55) among them from last season, five of eight mainstays are gone at UW, three to the NFL. Since three of Washington’s two deeps on the offensive line are freshmen, it is no wonder that Willingham is so focused on the offensive line. He’s going to be rebuilding it for the next few years.

Since Willingham is biased on the subject and since you can cite a plethora of statistics to prove or disprove an offensive or defensive adage, let’s look at the BCS title game from last season to settle on an adage, one way or another. The results point to the correct adage, as far as I am concerned, one I didn't expect.

Texas, which won the national championship game against USC, 41-38, finished the season third in the nation in total offense and tenth in total defense, while USC finished first and forty-eighth in those categories, respectively. In this case, the team with the better defense prevailed – although there were two missed calls by the officials that went against the Trojans, one of them allowing for a phantom touchdown by Texas quarterback Vince Young and the other giving Texas a critical turnover, killing a Trojans' scoring drive. 

The correct cliché, concerning the offense versus the defense, was stated in the Wall Street Journal – of all places – last Saturday.

In his article, “Pro Football’s Cherished Myths,” Allan Bara of the Journal (August 26) writes, “NFL champions have almost always been great on both sides of the ball. As football historian T. J. Troop puts it, the adage should be ‘Great defense beats great offense – and vice versa.’”

Last year's BCS title game was an instance of that adage: great defense beats great offense -- and vice versa.

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Bara slays some other pro football myths with his bare bodkin. If these aren't myths in college football now, they will be in the course of time.

• "You need a strong running game."

• "A turnover is a turnover."

• "Great teams are built around the kicking game."

• "You have to control the ball."

• "The pass sets up the run."

• "Pass completion percentage is a key stat."

• "This is the age of the running quarterback."

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Mal's word of the week: bodkin (a dagger) (google Hamlet's soliloquy).

Casey Bulyca, Ryan Bush and Clay Walker appear in the photo above.

USC finished forty-eighth in the nation in total defense last season? USC plays in a conference dominated by the best offenses in the nation.