Bolstered by the last two weeks of playing the Seahawks whose entire offense is Russel Wilson and Doug Baldwin, and playing an eagles team that was resting it's starters for the playoffs. That 8th in total defense is a total sham of a rating.
It's worse than that because they were just 8th in Total defense (yards) and some here believe since the NFL uses that to rank defenses, it must be a really great measure of how good our defense is.
The problem is if you start digging into the majority of the stats available, anyone who is truly, truly honest with themselves would understand that this defense is the epitome of average/mediocre.