I think you are talking to me, the OM thing. If you are, I never claimed you said 'failure to improve.’ I was generalizing the thoughts of the Skins fanbase.
I think you, as well as others, see top 10 ranked defense and think everything is rosy, when in fact, it is not. I think what I am trying to convey is eluding you as well as others. Maybe I am not the right person to deliver the message.
YPG is not that important in the grand scheme of things. There may be some correlation here and there, but correlation does not mean causation. I will not argue that teams caught on to our defense as the year progressed, mainly because of the decrease in turnovers. That is to be expected.
I will say that our 4th down defense in 2009 was significantly better than 2010. No arguments here at all.
One thing I think is important is that 5 of our last 8 games, we held opponents to under 20 pts. That is better than the Chargers who had the #1YPG and the #10 PPG. We were hot and cold. The Eagles game makes our defense look way worse for the final 8 games. The first 8 games we allowed 21.25 PPG (one of my qualifiers for a good defense). The final eight we allowed 25.87, a huge difference. Take out that Eagles game (an outlier) and we averaged 21.14. I know it is not fair to remove a game, I just wanted to emphasize that it was a debacle. However, I do not believe our defense got 'significantly’ worse as the season wore on.
I could go on about YPG, but honestly, I don't think it will do any good.
Also, points 3 & 4 of your post...do you think they contradict themselves? Because I do. In 3 you are basically saying that you should know within 8 games whether or not a system change is appropriate. In 4, you are admitting that it is hard to find the proper personnel for the change. Which one is it? Is it easy or is it hard?