*MB Buccaneers Defense vs All Time Great Defenses

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“Defense wins championships.” It's a motto that has passed around sports since legendary former Alabama head coach, Bear Bryant. The Myrtle Beach Buccaneers are coming off quite the season on that side of the football in 2035. Many may have heard how great this defense played this season, but exactly how good were they? Let's take a deeper look into the stats and how they compare to other great football defenses of the past.

DSFL
In Season 19 the Tijuana Luchadores broke the DSFL record for points allowed in a single season allowing 165 points (11.8 per game), breaking the record previously held by Portland in Seasons 5 and 6 where they allowed 177 points (12.6 per game). While both records are rather impressive in a league where on average defenses are allowing over 200 points per game, in 2035 the Buccaneers demolished the record for points allowed. The Buccaneers allowed 119 points (8.5 per game), a mind boggling low number for the league. Taking a look at yards allowed the Buccaneers did not end up with the DSFL record, that would belong to the bot team Palm Beach Solar Bears of Season 5 who allowed 237.6 yards per game. The Buccaneers ended the regular season allowing 268.6 yards per game in the 2035 season, the next closest to that figure was the Season 19 Grey Ducks and the Season 16 Portland Pythons who allowed 279.5 and 279.9 yards per game respectively. For a user team there really isn’t a team that compares to Myrtle Beach’s defense this year, so to continue this comparison we are going to take a jump into a different universe. The National Football League.

NFL
For this part of the comparison I decided to put the Buccaneers defense up against five of the best defenses in NFL history; The 1985 Chicago Bears, 2000 Baltimore Ravens, 1991 Philadelphia Eagles, 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers and the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. All of these defenses outside of the '91 Eagles went on to win a Superbowl, so with the Ultimini playoffs coming up soon let's see how MB will fair in this group.

Points

The '76 Steelers and '35 Buccaneers are the two teams to have played 14 game seasons out of this group and are the teams who come out on top in terms of points allowed per game. Both these defenses allowed single digit points per game in the regular season a feat not often seen in today's high powered offenses in football. For this category MB comes out on top by just over a point per game.

Rushing Yards

The NSFL is a run heavy league and thus the Buccaneers are at the bottom of the pack in rushing yards allowed despite having the best run defense in the DSFL this year. The '76 Steelers low numbers can also be attributed to the run heavy era of the NFL during this time but they still beat out MB by almost 30 yards per game.

Passing Yards

The opposite can be said for passing yards however, the NFL even in 1976 had better quarterback play than the DSFL currently has through the air. Thus locking MB to lead this category. For more about DSFL QB's I recommend my teammate's article on them.. The long story short is that the MB secondary while great in its own right is also skewed to the lead here.

Total Yards

When looking at the picture as a whole Myrtle Beach still lags behind the NFL great defenses in terms of yardage allowed despite having the best secondary of the group. A true testament to just how great some of these NFL defenses were.

Sacks/Turnovers

Compared to real NFL defenses the Buccaneers are significantly behind when it comes to turnovers and sacks, however I can still see a positive in this finding. The fact that the Myrtle Beach defense is able to contend with the big guns without the turnovers to aid them shows how special this defense really was.

Conclusion
The Myrtle Beach defense was a truly unique defense in the DSFL this season, so much so there isn't another defense in DSFL history to truly compare it to. Allowing the least amount of points ever and yards by a non bot team. However when looking at the defense in the context of the great NFL defense of the past the Buccaneers are humbled. The question lies what this team will do with their defense in the playoffs. While stats are nice to talk about, the most important one will be win or loss.

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