4 games with 40+ points allowed

Of all of the things we have seen this year, the item that is the worst for me personally is allowing 40 points in a single game. 

It is a threshold that your defense should rarely permit during a season.  There are not enough possessions or time in the game to normally allow such a thing to occur.  (Think Detroit, a team that has won 2 out of the last 31 contests.  More on that comparison below.) 

In the 2009 season, it happened an astonishing FOUR times.  And the followup statistic on history is that this last occurred to the Giants franchise in 1966.  We had to go back 43 years to see this kind of egregious violation of our senses! 

We looked at all of the years between 1967 and 2009 to see what the numbers looked like to get some perspective on this metric.

38 out of the past 43 years this franchise allowed zero or one 40 point outbreak.  When we looked at the 4 years where there were 2 or 3 outbreaks, the usual suspects came back to visit.  Remember that post on DSRS, the Defensive Simple Rating System.  It should not surprise you that some of those headliners were the same years.  1971 and 1973, the Alex Webster years of Tarkenton’s and the head coach’s exit, were the two 3’s.  1975 and 2007 were the two 2’s. 

2007 is interesting.  Week 1 of a brand new defensive coordinator, the team gave up 45 to Dallas.  And the team allowed 41 vs the Vikings, but Eli Manning had telegraphitis and threw 4 picks (three of which were pick 6’s for 21 of the 41 points.. not the defense’s fault). 

What it simply says in conclusion is that the head coach has to be asleep at the switch for something this bad to be happening this many times during a single season.  The Detroit Lions, that sorry sad sack franchise that has yet to even sniff a Super Bowl (let alone win one) has gone 2 seasons with 0-16 and 2-13 records.  They are leading the league this year in points allowed.  In 2008 and 2009 they have given up 40 points in a game 3 times each season.  This is a barometer of dysfunction.