49ers winning with great defense

The Washington Post’s Neil Greenberg uses TruMedia’s research tool and expected-points model to discover how good the 49ers defense has been this season:

“No team is forcing opponents to go three-and-out more often than San Francisco (48%). That, in turn, has given opponents less than 25 minutes of possession on average, the second-best mark in the NFL. Perhaps most impressively, San Francisco’s defense is allowing 33 points fewer per 100 snaps than we would expect given the down, distance and field position of each play against, per data from TruMedia. Since 2002, the first year the league expanded to 32 teams, only this year’s Patriots have saved more points over the first six weeks of a season (45 fewer points per 100 snaps).”

Full article: The Washington Post