re: 2012 Atlanta Falcons Schedule

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Does defense really win championships?
In a word: no.
We found that when it comes to winning a title, or winning in sports in general for that matter, offense and defense carry nearly identical weight. For example, here’s what Berman didn’t tell you: the number of Super Bowl champs with a top 10 offense? Thirty-eight. And a top 3 offense? Twenty. In other words, offense wins championships, too.
We further found that among the 45 NFL Super Bowls, the better defensive team — measured by points allowed that season— has won 29 times. The better offensive team won 25 times. (Note that adds up to 53, which means that some teams are the better offensive and defensive team in the Super Bowl. Nineteen Super Bowls have featured a team superior on both sides of the ball. Those teams have won 14 of those games.) It’s a slight edge for defense, but it’s a pretty close call and not different from random chance. The favorite statistic of the “defense wins championships” proponents is that the top-ranked defense during the regular season has won 15 Super Bowls, whereas the top-ranked offense has won only 8. Although this would seem to confer an advantage to defense, these two numbers are not statistically different. And, remember, since the top-three defenses have won no more than the top-three offensive teams, it also means that offensive teams ranked 2 and 3 have won more Super Bowls than the second- and third-best defensive teams, though again, these differences are not statistically significant.
But we’re only talking about 45 games, so let’s broaden the sample size. There have been 427 NFL playoff games over the last 45 seasons. The better defensive teams have won 58 percent of them. The better offensive teams have won 62 percent of the time. (Again, the winning team is sometimes better both offensively and defensively, which explains why the total exceeds 100 percent.) That’s a slight edge to the offense, but again, pretty even.
In almost 10,000 regular season games, the better defensive team has won 66.5 percent of the time compared with 67.4 percent of the time for the better offensive team. That’s a slight nod to the offense but a negligible difference.

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