I have been following the discussion with interest as things get brought up by everyone involved that I didn't know on my own. And that's one of my favorite things about this board - it's an opportunity to learn from some very knowledgeable posters.
But in following the discussion I've gotten the impression that you might be been reading past JY53.
Cases in point:
You wrote "You can't say they were ranked #1 last year by the official rankings and then use an adjusted number to compare this year." ... but that's not what JY53 did. He used adjusted numbers for both years and specifically says the Rams went from 2nd to 5th, not 1st to 5th. See this post from this thread, titled "That did not happen we went from 2nd to 5th" [
ramsrule.com] and also find this comment "5th in points allowed by defense--2nd last year" in this post: [
ramsrule.com]
And when you wrote "I don't care what the stats say, this defense is not as good as last year." you actually agree with JY53. See this comment "yes, the defense is not as good as last year. " from this post: [
ramsrule.com]
AlbaNY_Ram