No, not looking past his comments which is why I tried to circle it back around to what the real conversation should be about. Because I clearly hear him saying that the defense isn't too far removed from last year and I think that is the whole point being made. He may have said that it's not as good as last year but he's also suggesting that that difference is negligible. Which is obviously not the case.
I ultimately don't care about the defensive rankings and if they find a way to win a SB with this unit, it'll all be meaningless. But I don't think they can win with how they are doing things on defense and I feel an obvious difference in approach between last year and this year. To the extent that with what we've got on the field right now, if a different approach was taken we would see better results.
I agree that the official ranking isn't specific enough but with that specific suggesting how they "really" played, we are left with that actual number being misleading as well. Last year's #1 official ranking, although slightly inaccurate, was more indicative of their presence on the field. We may actually be #5 this year but we don't play like it. Last year, we could stop a drive when it was needed. This year, we have not been able to do that, especially against top teams. Accumulating meaningless numbers against cellar dwellars doesn't mean anything overall and definitely doesn't help us against who we're going to face in the post season.