If only there was some metric that accounted for the defenses a team was playing against...
Oh wait, Seattle had the 7th best offensive DVOA last year! (1st def, 5th ST, 1st overall)
That's great, look at the teams though. The teams they faced outside of the NFC West weren't that great defensively or offensively for that matter. It's the same reason why Arizona came out with the record they did.
Jacksonville, Houston, Tennessee, Tampa, Atlanta, Minnesota, New Orleans, NYG.
That's half a schedule right there. Throw in the division games, and we are at 14, which are either high scoring affairs or low scoring depending on which game you choose. So the other two games they didn't do so hot. Beat by Indy, only scored 12 on Panthers. It's not hard to have a high ranked offense when you are pissing on loser teams and shutting their offenses down. I guess the DOVA won't tell you that though.
Oh, Godslay, you put up this level headed persona then pout so hard despite it.
Doesn't count in the sense that the game was an anomaly as far as the offense was concerned. It was the worst possible game they could have put up, at the worst time. No pouting here. Basically saying the game was an outlier as far as I'm concerned. For the sake of argument, not to try and sleight the effort that was given by the Seahawks. That is all. If you want to put it that way, go for it.
niners/seahawks fattened up on bad defenses? why didn't denver/dallas fatten up on bad offenses? god knows they played plenty of bad offenses on the year but couldn't manage a top 20 finish on defense
I would argue we did. Look at some of the scores of the bad teams we played. Typically ~20 or below in points. When we faced better squads, they could score at will. No argument there. Plus you have to account for the accelerated pace at which we scored, and how the defense had cushions at points. Skewed the stats, but it wasn't a good squad in general for a variety of reasons.
