BullBuchanan

The defense we play is atrocious. It's a passive scheme designed to exploit weak opponents who fail to plan for it and make tactical errors in play selection. As we've seen 3 years running, it fails gloriously against talented teams that exploit its weaknesses and play around its strengths. That's exactly what teams like the Bengals and Chiefs have done for years. Because of how passive it is, no one on the DL is really in a position to succeed. Before he got here, Mario Addison was a p[ass rushing monster good for 10 sacks a year. His production was instantly sliced in half and Bills fans identified him as a problem. Jerry Hughes, in his first year away from this defense recorded 9 sacks - his highest total since 2014. He had 2 last year starting in this defense. There's not a doubt in my mind that Basham would be more successful on another team and probably Rousseau too. Epenesa tries hard, but he's not good enough to be anything more than a fringe roster player.

You really don't want to come down with it. It's not a pretty sight for anyone around you.

6/14 is still pretty good at ~43%. the math on retread coaches isn't quite as simple as just looking who they are today because ideally you'd want to look at all of them over the same period. However, this season there were 8 HC "re-treads" who were previously HCs for other teams: Reid Carroll Pederson McCarthy Todd Bowles Belichick Ron Rivera Lovie Smith 5 made the playoffs, two got close and one ended in last place. Bowles, Pederson and Smith were in their first year with new clubs and Belichick, Rivera and Smith each started several QBs due to injury of ineffectiveness.

based on what? 12 of the last 20 super bowls were won by coaches you could deem re-treads if the qualification is: fired from a previous NFL HC job. 13 depending on how you count Arians.

chemtrails.

did someone's parents get divorced? It snowed a lot...

Being "emotionally drained" isn't an acceptable excuse. it's 3 hours out of a 168 hour week that they had to suck it up. If they couldn't, that's an indictment of management.

Exactly how does a Blizzard/deaths not related at all to the football team drain their energy? Von Miller wasn't even here last year, and we have 3 young draft picks at the position. Losing multiple Safeties hurt us, but it's one position and not why we lost. Every team has injury problems. The Bengals just lost their Left tackle for the season along with two other offensive lineman. They sure didn't look gassed/drained when they stomped all over us. It just sounds like a super weak series of excuses that don't actually point to a legitimate reason why they were unprepared.

Getting your team ready to play is job requirement #1. if you can't get that right, you can't possibly get anything past that right. There was no reason for them to be unprepared, least of all "running out of gas". A player might not be 100% by the time a season ends, but if all 53+ are worn down, that's a coaching problem.

I never agreed to that. "Running out of gas" is not a viable excuse for a team of professional athletes who have been put together at the highest level. In fact, I'd go so far to say that if that is what happened, everyone should be fired without question. It's completely unacceptable to not be prepared at the level these guys are at.

People keep repeating this like it's true. What adversity did they face outside of Hamlin that's unique to them? How many coaches had the opportunity? more than 5?

people supported grifters 50 years ago too and believed whatever it was they wanted to regardless of evidence. The biggest difference today is that every idiot has a megaphone that they can use to find like-minded idiots that they can share their ideas with.

Saffold looked exhausted since we signed him. These guys are professionals. They really don't have any reason to be more "exhausted" than the other teams who are still playing football. Everybody faces adversity and outside of the Hamlin incident, which ended up working out as well as it possibly could, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

that may very well be. Josh was certainly under siege. He did have his shots however and came up short on many occasions. 3 passes to Diggs in particular stand out.

He sure wasn't yesterday.

The Bengals aren't built to win a championship yet either. They have too many leaks in their OLine and secondary. They just made us look like chumps because McDermott sets himself up for that and Taylor had a major coaching advantage. They lose that advantage against Reid, Shanahan and maybe even Siriani too. Every team left in the playoffs is better than the Bengals. The NFC will probably smoke whoever goes from the AFC.

Why wouldn't the same team that bent us over yesterday have done the same thing last year when we had an even shittier defense staring Levi Wallace and Dane jackson?

Looks like it was tails

I agree with a lot of this. While we were playing to try to win the game against the Jets, KC was tooling up their team to win in January. The worst part, is that despite our wins, we didn't even look like a team that was well prepared in the regular season. We sure as ***** didn't against the Dolphins or the Bengals either. Think about it - what exactly can you say this team did to exploit the fact we played against a 7th round rookie QB last week? What can you say we did to exploit the Bengals starting 3 backup offensive lineman? We either had no plan at all, or it was so horrendously bad that it looked like we didn't. That to me is the theme of the season - preparedness. No matter the team, no matter the situation you could count on us looking EXACTLY the same week to week. Sure, we'd go run heavy for a quarter here and there, but we quickly abandoned it for the low percentage deep shots When they worked, we won, when they didn't, well you get what we got yesterday. Same on defense and their soft ass nickel zones. Next year I want to see a gameplan from week to week that looks like they've ever spent 5 minutes watching the opposing team, and I'd LOVE to see them use players that either excel at that gameplan or can help us with future gameplans down the road.

It could have been far worse. We only had the one turnover despite being outclassed and outcoached everywhere. This offense relies entirely too much on breaking games open with big plays, and when that doesn't happen we struggle. This defense relies entirely on opposing teams beating themselves. I've never seen a less aggressive team with worse tackling, hitting, ball hawking, and pass rushing. They do nothing to an exceptional level. That's certainly one way to classify them. 😂

I think it's a coin flip. Heads - Our defense exploits the Bengals Oline woes the way the Ravens did which offsets their superior skill position talent. Josh plays like Good Josh and hits the open man taking plenty of underneath stuff to open up the big play and drives it home when it's there. Tails - Bengals dynamic offense looks unstoppable like they did a couple weeks ago against a passive defense that can't get to the QB and can't keep up with the Bengals all-world WRs. Josh Allen forces too much on low percentage plays and we can't keep up. I won't be shocked to see either version.

the same Andre Reed who had 4 1000 yard seasons and none back to back, and only hit 10 TDs once in a 16 year career despite being healthy, having Jim Kelly throwing to him for 12 of them and starting for the overwhelming majority of it?

yea, maybe the last pick in the draft is good on his own merit. Maybe Daniel Jones is too.

my point is that Shanahan is the likely reason why Purdy is good. He's proven it year after year. At every job he's had, he's led QBs to career years including guys like Brian Hoyer, RG III, Matt Ryan, Nick Mullens, CJ Breathard, Jimmy Garoppolo and came just a hair short of his best with Rex Grossman.

Yes, I am well aware that there are "several". There have been maybe 5 of them over ~60 years if you don't count QBs who had great runs the year they won it all with otherwise average or up and down careers. These 5 were all paired with elite defenses with 4 of them being historically good (85 bears, 91 Giants, 00 Ravens, 02 Bucs). Statistically untrue. Of the top 20 NFL passers of all time 15 of them were taken in the 1st round and only 2 were taken after the 3rd (Brady and Moon). There is overwhelming data that says the early rounds of the draft will yield the best QBs. That doesn't mean you can't be great if you're drafted later, but it does mean it's far less likely.