Mikie2times

At the 7 was flat out the wrong decision. The probability of conversion is much lower than OT and really not close.

Billsy loss and absurd to go for two at the 7. Completely reckless.

It’s crazy what Allen’s mobility brings. Put all Josh’s arm talent in Geoff’s mobility and we lose last week

I hate that the Cowboys landed Cooks for a 5th and 6th in separate years. He was exactly the kind of addition that would have really transformed the WR room. They're elite.

Even though he didn’t play as much as I would have liked he was a good piece for the team that year. Miss him as well.

Flacco has made some really puzzling decisions and is turnover prone. The Browns OL is not very good at pass pro. Njoku has been a revelation. But consider who they're mopping up in this streak. A decimated Jaguars teams off that Bengals Monday night game, which they still have yet to recover from. Then it took a miraculous Bear collapse to win at home vs Chicago. Then a Stroudless Texans team whose defense is among the worst in football. Then the Jets who have routinely been destroyed by playoff teams. That defense IS very good and even better at home. Also props to Stefanski as he has really scripted Flacco into some great PA calls with wide open WR's. Flacco also throws a great deep ball, still, just not fully sold that this team is dangerous. Most teams can beat most team in these playoffs and to me they qualify as most teams. Baltimore is also not a team I'm concerned with. They hit like a MF, but we have the script on Lamar. That offense is dependent on downfield plays and Lamar doing Lamar things with his legs. To McD's credit, that's about the worst style you can try against us. We have been excellent in lane discipline with mobile teams and we will not give up much over top. If we play "Allen" defense vs Baltimore which is what we are designed to do and force them to beat us 3-5 yards at a time a playoff Lamar will fail. While I'm not super bullish on the Bills, I do still feel like they're the most dangerous. I'm not bullish because I'm holding this team up to previous iterations and I just don't feel we are as good. That said, we are playing a more playoff friendly style with Brady calling plays. We have a closer in Josh, defense is improving, getting healthier. Nobody in the AFC this year looks like they can role us. If you can't role us Colts or Bengals style, we are very dangerous. We will occasionally role a good team ala Miami and if we can preserve a late lead, Allen will put you in that spot in most competitive games.

I would put my Herby Hancock on that idea

Isn't he Tremaine's great grandfather?

Hopefully he has an obstructed view

That might be unpopular and so will this. He's paid a million per year. Doctors medically cleared him stating he had essentially the same risk as everybody else. How many people would "comeback" to pursue that income? I would guess in the 90%+. If that's the case is what he did deserving of the award?

I'm not asking Allen to be great. If he has to do so, I hope he can deliver as he has at times before. Yes, I expect a generational QB to step up in the playoffs but being successful in playoffs has a lot of paths. I don't think we can win on Josh's back alone and that's not what I'm asking. I view our path with how Brady is managing the offense as being more Bengal like. Run dominant. Limit mistakes. Keep it close and trust your franchise guy to win it at the end. With that, I'm asking Allen to be consistent. Minimum 80-85 rating. Mahomes, Burrow, and Allen are 1-4 combined when they have under an 80 rating. Josh has two under 70 ratings. That is a guaranteed exit and the formula we are trying to employ will not work if that occurs.

It's the last 7 Super Bowls, 14 participants. We will be fine if we can get to 20+. It's been that way in the regular season for the most part as well. Yes, the Bengals scored 19. It's a real mix. The floor needs to be 20+ but certainly plenty of teams that rolled 30 the entire way. I don't see us being that sort of team. I'm hopeful with how we have developed our running game that perhaps we can Bengal our way to victory in some of these games where Josh is below 80 in rating. We used to just keep passing in those games prior and was like putting us in quick sand. More we fought, the worse it got. A solid ground game gives us a foundation to win ugly as we did vs KC and the Chargers. You have to like Allen late in those ugly games.

Nobody is in the same universe as Mahomes who is active in the playoffs Burrow has not shown as high a ceiling as Allen, but he has kept the floor higher. Burrows 2nd worst performance in QBR is the same as Allens 4th worst performance. Outside Mahomes TB Super Bowl, Allen has the two lowest ratings out of all the games combined. His % of playoff games under a 90 rating is 55%. Burrows is 28.5% and Mahomes is 21.4% Playoffs are less about being great and more about not being awful.

2 of the last 14 Super Bowl participants scored under 20 points in a playoff game and still made the Super Bowl. Buffalo has done it 3 times. So while I would like to agree with this, the modern game really isn't trending that way anymore. Even if it was, is our defense going to hold up in an under 20 playoff game? It has once. Unless we really figure some things out the answer to that is no. I also don't think anybody is celebrating Montana and Brady and more recently Mahomes for what they did in the regular season. Your comment about QB's not being prime for key output in the playoffs is just not right.

It was so funny watching Chase display about 4 seconds of patience only to becoming overwhelmed by the need to downplay KC's ability. 🤪

I will post once and move on as I think this topic has had just about everything said that could be said in the past. About 4-5 times a year and in each of these playoff games, the offense completely forgets how to move the ball. We don't run. Josh has his completion % plummet. Sometimes we see a turnover, but the main ingredient is we can't get a first down and our rhythm is gone. That version of the offense can't show up in the playoffs. If it does, we need to learn how to manage it. We saw that version of the offense in the 2nd half against Houston. After we took the lead, we saw it for about 3 quarters in the AFC Championship at Arrowhead. Then we saw it for the entire Bengals game. The floor needs to be higher than that. I'm hoping the addition of our running game can steady the tides a bit more when this is occurring.

I’m not that far off on this take of Allen. But what has gotten me more away from this thinking for now is seeing the same types of problems basically infect the entire league this year. Look at Purdy in the losses as an example. Total implosion. Even worse than Allen in the Jets game. Mahomes was very similar against the Raiders. Totally in the camp of Josh needing that consistency you describe but given everybody seems to need it this year, doesn’t Josh win out? If inconsistency is equal all around, Josh has to win. His highs are just higher.

I don't like Belichick having one last chance to drop a steaming deuce on us.

The 30 second vs 1 minute threshold was just put in place to say, to consider this a blown save the other team needs adequate time to actually threaten you.The scoring threshold was put in place to determine "runners in scoring position" concept. In baseball you only get credit for a save if the other team is actually a threat. So this had to be one score. The time thresholds are arbitrary. We could say instead of 5 minutes, make it 7 minutes. Instead of a minimum 30 seconds for a FG make it 15 seconds. I tried to be on the side of a true blown save. A clear situation where a stop was required and it wasn't made. About 5 instances occurred where a blown save did occur under the time threshold of 30 seconds for a FG and 1 minute for a TD (13 seconds among them). In these rare examples I counted the blown save. As it was even worse in my mind than having adequate time. I did keep that concept uniform. In the other examples in which the save wasn't blown but it was below the time threshold it just wasn't counted at all. Hope that makes sense. As I plowed into this I had to keep creating nuances to account for the various situations.

For sure. Again, the aggregate was really the only reason I have the team totals. I knew I would run multiple seasons against Buffalo to compare against the aggregate. As for observations with some of the other teams. -The 49ers just haven't been in close games. Only one trial. -The Ravens are a team I would be interested in maybe seeing more. If you recall, they blew like a 20 point lead to us in 2021 I believe. They blew a Wild Card lead to the Bengals last year. I think they might have some chronic issues if we go further back. -Green Bay, Seattle, Titans, Eagles, Chargers I have some curiosity. It would be nice to know who is the low in this sample over a few years and if any teams show patterns. I would think the Chargers would. - Pittsburgh, Tomlin has always had this magical ability to get the most out of his guys. Is this it? What is the driver? Closers on defense? Does this stretch multiple seasons?

Payton was going to keep pushing Russ until he either broke or pushed back. I don't think he cares about a "G Golly Willikers" middle of the road QB's feelings. While he is kind of a complete a-hole I don't know if that was the wrong approach. I think he wanted something at the position as far as leadership. He certainly wanted something as far as performance. Given Russ's contract I think his goal was to make sure he got both and he wasn't afraid to push for that outcome. Again, sort of an a-hole, but some people will push and grow from it.

For sure. The Hall is no longer that level of pedigree and it really should be. I would much rather see smaller classes and higher pedigree but that doesn't really pass the sex appeal test.

My general thought is McD being the common denominator. Being a defensive based HC, I think it's fair to roll this to him. If not, probably fair to roll it to the people he had in charge and then roll it to him. I stated from the outset, no perfect way to do this, but if you want to know how many times we had a lead under 5 minutes and lost that lead, this would probably be the way to do it. I would think......