Maine-iac

I remember thinking Okoye was the biggest running back I'd ever seen. Pretty sure Henry is almost as big.

Two words ............ Anderson Silva. I think Silva made it back.

You have to be a team that wants to run the ball to bring in a guy like Henry. He's good at 5 or 10 carries. He's deadly at 15 or 20.

They need to do something to help him. Keep some TE's in let them slip out after blocking. That line is horrendous.

The elite athlete of our CB's is Elam if that tellls you how much being an elite athlete matters on a zone defense.

Levis looks good ....................at least when he's standing. The Titans line looks like a jailbreak around the edge nearly every play.

Don't watch a ton of Steelers ball but I've counted at least 2 wide open guys Pickett has missed in about 5 throws.

This .................... if we had just picked up a few of these guys a couple weeks earlier.

PFF .............. I mean they must have some analysis behind it but he has thrown 8 picks and he lost a fumble in the Pats game so he must have more than 3 turnovers. I guess they don't qualify as PFF turnover-worthy plays. I get what they are saying though ........ Allen has been better with the ball.

Nothing to be sorry about. I said we had a punchers chance. I didn't promise anyone a victory.

I have to believe a large part of the Miami win component was our offense putting pressure on Miami to keep up. Bengals will largely be the same (or could be the same). Our defense has a punchers chance if our offense can keep the Bengals passing. I get it that Burrow is great and the WR's are great but our best chance for getting turnovers is playing coverage and bringing pressure. If the Bengals are up and running the ball I'm not saying we can't punch it out but generally if we are creating turnovers it's in pass defense. We still have our pass rushers and our secondary outside of White. We should be in a better position than last year which in the 3rd qtr was a 17-10 game at one point. I think the first first possessions on offense well say a lot about how the day might go.

McD has definitely been blitzing a lot more. Would have never seen that from Frazier. The problem is he's mostly been run blitzing because we've had problems stopping the run. The good thing is that we've been doing this for a monthi now so I think McDermott has a better feel for what works and what doesn't and mixing it up better.

About as well as Elam ................ hopefully they are learning something and show up next year.

That kid they drafted this year from Princeton is a future star. I was hoping the Bills would take him but they had Shorter in for interviews so I wasn't surprised when they took Shorter.

The biggest thing that would help us is if the offense comes out firing on all cylinders. At one point in the 3rd qtr the score was 17- 10 last year. If our offense was playing well it's not unthinkable for us to score a lot more than 10 points in a half and then it's a completely different game. Same goes this year. I also think shutting them down might be a big ask but if our offense keeps the pressure on them we do have healthy pass rushers and both our safeties this year. I think a win is totally doable but we are going to have to make some plays. We have to be the ones catching passes that bounced off someone.

Win the toss, defer or not, I'd love to see us just march up and down the field and score at will. If it turns into a boat race we still have some great pass rushers and some great safeties and Burrows will throw picks from time to time.

All the more reason you would run the ball ................like I said and like they did last year. Someone was saying they wouldn't run because they have such great receivers. It's true they have great receivers and Burrow is good but if we are playing coverage they are going to run. Without Jones and Milano if we can't stop that at some point we are going to have to either switch who's on the field or run blitz and that's when the chess match and those recievers will come into the equation. The reason Mac Jones looked like a good QB was because we couldn't stop the run and with Williams or Dodson on the field they couldn't cover. We switched it up by making Poyer play LB and inserting Rapp but even if that helps against the run will that cover the Bengals WR's. It'll be interesting ........... I hope the offense comes out on fire and limits them running the ball that way.

AFC? So 32 starting guards and he ranked 43rd ........... sounds about right to me.

Same group of receivers they had last year in the playoffs when Mixon ran for 105 and none of the receivers had more than 60 yards? Why? ..... because we couldn't stop the run.

.............. I know you meant to say CB.

If we manage to jump out to a lead I could agree with what you are saying but otherwise if Mixon got 16 carries against a 49er defense tell me why he wouldn't get even more against us.

I'm not sure being good against Baltimore's passing attack is going to sell me on him. I didn't actually think he was horrendous against the Jags. I just thought Ridley was really good. Then I watched some break downs and realized he did make a lot of mistakes and he was eventually pulled because he wasn't bring runners down. Now the Baltimore pass catchers are on one end of the spectrum and Ridley another and the answer is probably somewhere in between but either way he's still making a lot of mistakes zone or otherwise. Maybe it just sticks in my mind more becuase it's his most recent work.

My bad ............. guess it was you posting a PFF twitter stat that made me think you were using PFF as a stat.

Or more accurately his PFF grade has been good in zone. Elam finished PFF ranked higher than Benford last season and Benford is starting and Elam isn't even dressing most games so PFF grades must not mean a lot to the coaching staff. Elam has a lot of physical tools but he still needs to put it together on the field. Beane's keeping him around must mean something.

Hyde was a CB at one time and so was Corey Graham who played safety as well.