It’s an interesting question and goes back to the situational posts I answered last week. Really, playing with a lead can absolutely taint your stats because if you have 9+ point lead in the second half you just don’t want to give up any big plays. If they want pass or run plays that go 4-6 yards and keep the runner in bounds, they can have them.
So you look at the Steelers game yesterday and you see how some of the stats for the Steelers are a bit skewed. They were down, they had to take some shots down the field and they even grabbed a couple of them, but the Pats got one too.
These kinds of things can add up over the year and have a real impact on the things like passing yards and the someone looks at the number out of context and thinks they pass defense is worse than it actually might be.
But in a tie game you’re just running your defense as you game planned.
There’s no question the “prevent” style (even though it’s technically not really a prevent defense per se) can be frustrating, but it also works if you don’t care about stats. And as BB says, “stats are for losers”.