Looking at the Football Outsiders' Drive stats (seen here) it showed me just how great both the offense and defense are playing. It got me thinking about which unit I was more impressed with, the offense or the defense. This will depend on your preseason expectations, but let's take a look at the current stats.

I like to look at efficency stats because it puts all teams on a level playing field. The numbers can become skewed if one teams has more drives than another (allowing for more yards, turnovers, etc) but by normalizing the stats on a per drive basis, it makes it much more useful to compare to the rest of the league.

Offense

Yards per drive: 33.64 (8th)

Points per drive: 2.35 (2nd)

Turnovers per drive: .079 (4th)

Drive Success rate: .705 (10th)

For context, Drive success rate is defined as:

the percentage of time that a team will get a first down or touchdown in a given set of four downs. Introduced in the Pro Football Prospectus 2005 essay "Debunking the Myth of Drive Momentum" by Tim Gerheim and Jim Armstrong.

 

 See here

Defense

Yards per Drive: 27.55 (10th)

Points per Drive: 1.92 (22nd)

Turnovers per drive: .200 (1st)

Drive Success Rate: .672 (15th)

For me, the offense has been more impressive. With Kolb slated to lead the helm early in the season, I expected there to be a learning curve for him and have some struggles. When Kolb went down and Vick came in, I was wary of what Vick could do with the offense.

Obviously, Vick has greatly exceeded expectations. The Eagles have one of the most efficient offenses in the NFL both in scoring points and limiting turnovers.

As far as the defense, they have been a pleasant surprise as well. They are the best at forcing turnovers and have done a nice job of holding the opposing offense at bay while Vick takes care of the offense.

So which unit has impressed you the most? I think both sides have their positives and negatives, so it will be interesting to see if there is a split vote or an overwhelming majority for one side.