Such lofty aspirations.

I looked up the tackle stats from the first 6 games of last season and compared them to this.
On this basis there is a clear improvement.

Last season (6 games)
Tackles: 680
Missed: 128
Percentage 19%

This season (6 games)
Tackles: 930
Missed: 125
Percentage: 13%

I think that one thing that we all wanted this season was a better defence.  In my opinion, the numbers above show a clear improvement.

If we think of the Sarries game as an anomaly, due to the huge defensive shift of the Robshaw twins and exclude it from the stats, we still have a clear improvement

Last season (5 games)
Tackles: 570
Missed: 100
Percentage 18%

This season (5 games)
Tackles: 704
Missed: 104
Percentage: 15%

(I know that different sites have different counts - but, I used Rugbypass as my source for stats.)    edited for typo