What was their rate on 3rd downs? You're right though, this is one of the problems I have with some of the Football Outsiders stuff. It's harder to do "rate" stats in football than baseball because of situations. I understand yards per play is trying to evaluate a defense independent of that team's own offense that forces them to be on the field too much. But you can have a relatively low ypp but not get off the field because you can't get a stop on 3rd down or force turnovers. Not saying either of those were the case with the Bears though, haven't looked at the numbers and compared. Actually, I think that's the beauty of the Football Outsiders stuff. As I just mentioned, DVOA takes situations into account. It incorporates things like time left in the game, down, distance, field position, etc. and attempts to put a value on those things. That's the type of thing you don't get with your standard run of the mill metrics. i don't know all that much about dvoa, but how does it weight important situations in tight games as opposed to frivolous situations in blowouts? and isn't the mere fact that a weighting system exists suggest a human pollution in all of it?