Tasty statistical savories straight from New Orleans

His hometown Saints are awesome – We're not sure we've ever seen a team that ranked in so highly in every indicator a quarter of the way through the season as do the Saints right now. They rank in the top 10 in every single indicator, except in rush defense, where they're 11th. But surrendering an average of 3.81 YPA is certainly above average (4.0 YPA) and hardly a weakness to worry about.

 

The nation's "pundits" need to give a little more love to the Saints defense – The New Orleans offense, as offenses typically do, will get all the hype. But the defense absolutely deserves some love. We talked last week about Darren Sharper as the leading candidate for NFL defensive Player of the Year honors and that belief still stands. But the Saints look rock-solid in every single defensive indicator, highlighted by their No. 1 ranking in the critical Defensive Passer Rating category. Even their Defensive Hogs are a top-three unit right now.

 

The Giants do almost everything well, too – Of the 14 indicators listed above, the Giants are among the league leaders in 12 of them. But they are the only team in this contest that has a couple of obvious statistical weaknesses: the highly-touted Defensive Hogs of the G-Men are actually among the worst in the league at stopping the run (4.81 YPA, 27th). The Giants are also not a particular efficient defensive club, as evinced by their No. 20 rank in Bendability.

 

Key match-ups favor New Orleans – Both of these weaknesses for New York represent favorable match-ups for New Orleans. The Saints run the ball as well as almost any team in football (4.96 YPA) and they're among the most efficient scoring machines in football (No. 2 in Scoreability).

 

Eli's break-out season – By know everybody knows that Giant's Eli Manning is having a career year. In fact, it necessitates a little humble crawfish pie for the Cold, Hard Football Facts. In our "Bold and Useless NFC Predictions" we wrote that "New York fans will turn on Eli Manning and his $93 million contract when he struggles with his typical 75 passer rating this season."

 

So far, so bad for us and so good for him. As one Giants fan, Chef Mitch, wrote yesterday about that prediction, "Perhaps after looking at the Cold Hard Football Facts, you might want to throw Eli some respect."

 

Well, he's got it now: Eli's Giants trail only Big Brother Peyton's Colts in the critical Passing Yards Per Attempt category. The Giants are clearly Eli's team and he's playing as well as any quarterback in football, even better than stat-monster Drew Brees in many areas.