Maine-iac

Spags is not afraid to bring the heat.

it was 17 to 10 at one point. A couple of second half stops would have made a huge difference. That said at that point White and Poyer were also injured so I'm not sure everyone would have been covered long enough for even a good DT to get there.

Open mouth insert foot. I'll own that.

Not saying he should be a starter but don't sleep on Johnson he's not awful. I'll probably regret typing this.

Most LB's would love to play behind that front 4. Not that Warner isn't good but he is in a good situation that helps.

Crazy idea .......... not every run goes for 10 but you keep running it.

I can't disagree but we didn't have to worry about that with Oliver, he never blew up. We were better with Darious than without him. We still had Kyle. After the two of them got done we've never had a presence in the middle like we did with them. Payne has way more size than Oliver and has, at the very least, shown an abliity to get to the QB. If the dollars were the same in the end I might think Payne has more upside.

He's pretty old now but Josh Johnson used to have some wheels.

49's just swarm. That line plays in the backfield all day. Same with the Eagles.

Am I crazy for thinking swap Payne for Oliver?

McDermott and Co made the playoffs with Tyrod Taylor throwing to Deonte Thompson and Kelvin Benjamin lest we forget. People are getting kind of crazy and taking things for granted. It could be a hell of lot worse.

No turnovers and 4 takeaways on defense always helps. Coincidentally Klein always played pretty well here.

So many groups had injuries but the OL even healthy is suspect. Saffold was a miss and we could use upgrades at several spots and certainly upgrades to the back ups. Coaching I'm not going to call out Dorsey and Frazier and say they can't coach their respective units. Dorsey in his first year and Frazier dealing with a massive number of injuries at every position except LB but that said the down and distance management and time management has been at times atrocious.

Stop making sense.

The defense was just injured at every position except LB. Everyone back healthy I'd say get younger at safety. On offense we have enough pieces to score but the OL needs better starters and better backups. Saffold was a miss. They need to establish an identity as a running team and I'm not talking about Allen running the ball. I don't think we need new backs for this we just need to call more run plays.

There were way more than two but I still say give me any two of our starters back on defense and run it again and the score would be a lot different. People have been talking ever since the loss like the team that played the Bengals is the same team from the first couple of weeks of the season.

All the people who are sold on how fast a back has to be are the same ones who would have taken Spiller over Freddie back in the day, Singletary has plenty of speed to carry the ball and he makes people miss and picks up extra yards. He just never gets a chance and that's not his fault. I like Cook a lot also but if it's 3rd and 1 and we need a yard if it's not Allen the next I'd want to see carrying the ball would be Motor.

Why? Not enough time left? There were still 3 quarters. We never tried to run the ball all year long and on the few occasions we did we did very well. You get predictable and you get got. If you only run the ball 10 times a game why would anyone not just play every down trying to get the QB.

Then maybe we should have tried running the ball more. I've been saying that all year long. Probably would have been harder to rush 3 lineman and blitz a db if we were running the ball. That said Bengals scored 24 on Baltimore with a healthy defense. Put any two of our injured starters on the field and I bet the score is much different.

How about we take away Hubbard, Hill, and Bates then Bell and Hilton and see if we don't score a few more points.

People talk like this defense can just lose Jones, Miller, Hyde, Hamlin and in game White and Poyer and still play the same defense we see with everyone healthy.

Maybe week one we had all the talent and optimism but come playoffs we were decimated with injuries and playing the absolute best of the best. Not trying to be a total apologist and I think there were mistakes made coaching. It's possible we had our worst game at the worst time but these coaches have us in a SB hunt and this game ins't representative of our usual showing. 31 teams end their season this way and several of them are usually pretty damn good. I know I'll get flamed for this and everyone is head hunting but I like what we've got. They need to expand and add wrinkles and get it right at the right times but I still think they are capable more times than not.

3rd and 7 vs the Dolphins. They know we are running the ball. What did we do? Tell me we can't run the ball. Just a couple weeks earlier they actually commit to running and we have two running backs with 100 yards. The RB's didn't do more because we just don't hand the ball off not because our OL can't block.

I couldn't quote you the statistic for the season but just from memory and what I've watched we seem to go for the block it all up and throw it deep approach. Today they kept blitzing DB's off the edge and since we don't run and don't pass short we catch everything in front of them and then get tackled. Since it's a DB they're blitzing they are much faster than our tackles and we don't get to throw deep. Occasionally we get them but until we run the ball and play a more efficient mix with short passing we will live and die by the long ball.

Outside of your opinion there is not one bit of evidence to say our OL couldn't commit to running the ball. You can't say we are bad at stuff that we've done well every time we have done it. If you just pass all the time you make your OL look worse because they know to just chase the QB. It happened to us in the middle of last year and it happened to us this year. They are not blitzing DB's ever other play to stop the run. Allen is getting the Tyrod Taylor treatment to keep him in the pocket the just Blitz him.