Fine you wanna go that route? Sure I'll play ball.
Yes 2 wins and 3 losses is a "sign of improvement." We aren't even halfway through the season and we have almost matched our win total for each of the past 2 seasons.
Turnovers:
We were 125th last year in turnovers given up last year with 25 (in 10 games). Almost halfway through the year (5 games), we've given up 5.
We forced 18 turnovers last year (10 games), we are currently at 8 turnovers. We are 1 turnover behind where we were last year. Not that much different.
Offense:
2020: currently averaging 389.9 y/game with 5.64 y/play
2021: currently averaging 395 y/game with 5.87 y/play.
I like the points per drive stat better but I can't find that one at the moment
Defense:
2020: currently giving up 459 y/game with 5.86 y/play
2021: currently 361.0 y/game with 5.31 (yards per play).
Penalties:
2020: 89 penalties through 10 games (8.9 per game)
2021: 27 penalties through 5 games (5.4 per game)
Kicking:
Don't have stats on this but anything is better than what last years was. Brent can actually kick a field goal and Gavin Stewart has kicked it out of the endzone on kickoffs more times than I can count
So what does this tell us:
- Our offense might not have improved in moving the ball as much as we like, but we are not hurting ourselves nearly as much as last year.
- While creating almost the same amount of turnovers, our defense is doing a lot more to limit how much the opposing team moves the ball
- Our penalties were 125th/127 last year in bad. We are now 37th. We are not hurting ourselves as much as last year.
- We can trust ourselves to actually put a kicker on the field to get us points.
Granted, there are still a ton of things we can improve on: red zone offense, forcing more turnovers, getting more pressure on the QB to name a few. But to say we haven't improved at all is such a terrible take.
