Mike Singletary is a staunch believer in the philosophy that the best offense is a great defense.

His Express rank next-to-last in the AAF in both total defense and scoring defense. Despite the numbers (345.8 yards and 22.5 points allowed per game) Memphis is generally regarded as one of the stingier units four games into the league’s inaugural season.

Why? Turnovers. The Express, who are averaging two takeaways each time out, came up with four in last week’s 26-23 come-from-behind win over the San Diego Fleet at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium. That’s music to the ears of Singletary, the team’s head coach and one of the most feared defenders professional football has ever known.

He says Memphis’ ball-hawking mentality is not merely coincidence, that it’s by design in an effort to take pressure off an offense that has had difficulty finding a rhythm it likes.

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“We don’t want the quarterbacks to feel they have to win the game, to take this team and put it on their backs while at the same time trying to correct some of the things they need to correct in order to an effective quarterback in our offense,” Singletary said Saturday. “Not stretching, trying to make plays that we don’t need to try and make right now. So our defense has taken it upon themselves to … come up with turnovers and put our offense in good field position.

“It alleviates the pressure.”

All well and good as long as the defense keeps forcing turnovers. But that’s much easier in theory rather than practice. And Zach Mettenberger knows it.

The 27-year-old former Tennessee Titans quarterback – who won a game he started and finished for the first time since beating Texas A&M and Johnny Manziel on Nov. 23, 2013 – told reporters Saturday it’s high time the Express offense returns the favor.

“We have a really tough D,” Mettenberger said. “We’ve just got to move the ball more to help them out. Right now, we’re asking entirely too much (with) them staying on the field and (us) expecting stops. It’s our job to kind of give them a breather. We didn’t run the ball as much as we wanted to. We completed balls, but we didn’t get to stretch the ball down the field as much as we wanted to. We didn’t turn the ball over which is huge.

“Not playing great offensively and still getting the win is huge.”

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Penalties were also on Mettenberger’s mind following the game – specifically, ill-timed ones. Four of the six flags thrown against Memphis were either on third or fourth down.

“We’ve still got to stop the penalties,” he said. “A few third downs we converted that got called back. Those are tough to overcome. But we were able to this week. We’ve still got a lot to build on. We did a lot of good things. It was a great team win. Now, we’ve just got to stack ‘em.”

The Express travel to face the Atlanta Legends at 3 p.m. Sunday (CBS Sports Network).

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