A players perspective on the Bengals game

[folz]

Congrats to Tyler for actually getting me to click on and read the article, but what a waste of time.

 

I thought that maybe he had something new or interesting to say because of his Twitter post saying, "we've been having the wrong conversation" about the Bengals game, that he talked "In depth" with Taiwan, that Dunne was going to discuss a "philosophy change" for the team, and he apparently had a quote from Taiwan saying, "We were like deer in headlights."

 

First of all, that quote doesn't appear in the article, so did Taiwan actually say that? Why post it to your Twitter, but not have it in the article? Dunne added absolutely nothing new to the conversation about the Bengals game (same old rehash, and as much from a Bills fan as from the player he talked "in depth" to). And his philosophy change was to start scoring 50 points a game, oh and draft a WR in the first 4 rounds. Genius. And then the article ends with "Here's How." Is there more article behind a paywall, or was that it? If there is more, it isn't really that clear...and/or its a shameless cliff hanger to get people to subscribe. If not, then what a strange way to end an article.

 

Not that I should be disappointed by an article in the off-season, but wow.

 

 

[JohnNord]

4 hours ago, Chaos said:

Deer in headlights sounds like a coaching failure to me. 

Not what Taiwan said… he doesn’t blame play calling.  He said it comes down to the players 

[Billl]

44 minutes ago, Einstein said:

 

Orlando Brown isn’t a bad LT. He’s mediocre and he’s not worth what Andy Reid foolishly gave up for him. He got taken to the cleaners. 

He’s an average to good LT.  KC traded the 31st pick and got back a second rounder used to draft Nick Bolton.  That’s the draft value of a mid second round pick that was given up for two years of a cost controlled LT who won a ring.  Both teams benefited from the trade.

[Beck Water]

45 minutes ago, Billl said:

Bills possessions:

Punt (3 and out)

Punt (3 and out)

TD

Punt

FG

Punt

Turnover on Downs

Interception

 

3 playoff teams won when their defense gave up 27+ points.  None won when their offense scored 10 or fewer.

 

I’m not trying to argue that the offense is without blame, clearly they didn’t do their job.  The point is, when the defense fails to get a stop and get the ball back to the offense, they’re not without blame either - and the fact that some games were won when the opponents scored more than 27 points doesn’t change that, the fact that the D didn’t get stops and the O only scored 10 points are not unrelated.

 

Someone made a good case a while back that to beat a good team, the defense needs to get at least 4 stops.  The Bengals forced 4 punts on us, we forced 2 on them.

[LeGOATski]

That's in line with what we saw on the TV screen. No one was ready, no one showed any signs of life, including the coaches, besides a few players.

[Malazan]

4 hours ago, DrDawkinstein said:

When it happens in the season, you can rally. Have a players-only meeting. Take the team on a field trip. Make a cardboard cutout of your owner naked, and take off post-it notes for every win. Whatever.

 

Unfortunately, when it happens in the playoffs, all you can do is find your reset button in the offseason and move on to next year.

 

..and what are they doing this offseason to ensure they're mentally prepared for a full season this time around? Also.. it didn't 'happen' in the playoffs. You can quibble about when it started, but by the bye week it was pretty apparent that something was not right. 

[Beck Water]

1 hour ago, folz said:

Congrats to Tyler for actually getting me to click on and read the article, but what a waste of time.

 

I thought that maybe he had something new or interesting to say because of his Twitter post saying, "we've been having the wrong conversation" about the Bengals game, that he talked "In depth" with Taiwan, that Dunne was going to discuss a "philosophy change" for the team, and he apparently had a quote from Taiwan saying, "We were like deer in headlights."

 

First of all, that quote doesn't appear in the article, so did Taiwan actually say that? Why post it to your Twitter, but not have it in the article? Dunne added absolutely nothing new to the conversation about the Bengals game (same old rehash, and as much from a Bills fan as from the player he talked "in depth" to). And his philosophy change was to start scoring 50 points a game, oh and draft a WR in the first 4 rounds. Genius. And then the article ends with "Here's How." Is there more article behind a paywall, or was that it? If there is more, it isn't really that clear...and/or its a shameless cliff hanger to get people to subscribe. If not, then what a strange way to end an article.

 

Not that I should be disappointed by an article in the off-season, but wow.

 

You called it - it’s a cliff-hanger to get people to subscribe.  Ty Dunne’s thing with “Go Long” is …long articles, so that piece that looks long enough to be an article is actually his intro.  I dunno about “shameless”, it seems like SOP to offer people a sample and see if you can get them to buy a bottle or a hunk of cheese so to speak.

 

I thought Dunne was a very good writer when he was with TBN, and I admire him for coming up with an independent business plan that’s evidently working to make him a living - good for him! But I haven’t been too intrigued by some of his interview choices…early on, he spent a lot of time talking to former Bills FO employees Tom Monos and Doug Whaley (a man who clearly has no ax to grind with the Bills or Sean McDermott) about the state of the Bills, and I just didn’t want to hear it.  I liked parts of his podcast with Isaiah McKenzie but I also felt he kind of ‘used’ McKenzie by drawing him on to maybe say stuff that could get him in trouble with McDermott.  So I haven’t personally been moved to subscribe.

8 minutes ago, Malazan said:

 

..and what are they doing this offseason to ensure they're mentally prepared for a full season this time around? Also.. it didn't 'happen' in the playoffs. You can quibble about when it started, but by the bye week it was pretty apparent that something was not right. 

 

??? By the Bye week?  Seriously?  Like, at the point of the season where we thumped the Steelers then beat the Chiefs in a pretty clean game where we had 125 yds rushing, Josh Allen only had 35 of those, 3 TD 0 INT 329 yds passing while picking Mahomes twice?

 

At that point, it was apparent to you that something was not right?

[Richard Noggin]

13 minutes ago, Beck Water said:

 

You called it - it’s a cliff-hanger to get people to subscribe.  Ty Dunne’s thing with “Go Long” is …long articles, so that piece that looks long enough to be an article is actually his intro.  I dunno about “shameless”, it seems like SOP to offer people a sample and see if you can get them to buy a bottle or a hunk of cheese so to speak.

 

I thought Dunne was a very good writer when he was with TBN, and I admire him for coming up with an independent business plan that’s evidently working to make him a living - good for him! But I haven’t been too intrigued by some of his interview choices…early on, he spent a lot of time talking to former Bills FO employees Tom Monos and Doug Whaley (a man who clearly has no ax to grind with the Bills or Sean McDermott) about the state of the Bills, and I just didn’t want to hear it.  I liked parts of his podcast with Isaiah McKenzie but I also felt he kind of ‘used’ McKenzie by drawing him on to maybe say stuff that could get him in trouble with McDermott.  So I haven’t personally been moved to subscribe.

 

??? By the Bye week?  Seriously?  Like, at the point of the season where we thumped the Steelers then beat the Chiefs in a pretty clean game where we had 125 yds rushing, Josh Allen only had 35 of those, 3 TD 0 INT 329 yds passing while picking Mahomes twice?

 

At that point, it was apparent to you that something was not right?

 

This is all solid. 

 

First, Dunne is a smart guy who can write.

 

Second, Dunne has unfortunately often leaned into recently 86'd players and personnel for quotes and perspectives that play to the frustrations of long-suffering Bills fans. And he seems too willing to base entire articles on a single source/interview. This particular excerpt (I believe there's much more behind the paywall?) is NOT terribly salacious, tbh. No big deal.

 

But above you mention several examples of him using potentially or even likely biased.scorned "inside" sources. He's playing the content-click-engagement game that an unaffiliated "reporter" probably HAS to play to cut through the noise...but in so doing sometimes he's just platforming and amplifying limited, subjective, possibly flawed perspectives.

[Einstein]

2 hours ago, Royale with Cheese said:

Reid wins the Super Bowl

 

Not because of Orlando Brown. Considering he gave up 11 pressures in the playoffs lol.

 

To put that into perspective, Trent Williams gave up 15 pressures ALL SEASON. Brown gave up, in 3 playoff games, nearly what other linemen give up in an entire season.

 

But yeah, he’s the reason Reid won the SB. lol.

 

2 hours ago, Royale with Cheese said:

and Brown gets the largest ever signing bonus for a lineman in FA…LOL.  

 

This is great for us. So foolish of the Bengals.

 

.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Einstein

[Einstein]

2 hours ago, Billl said:

He’s an average to good LT.  KC traded the 31st pick and got back a second rounder

 

You forgot the 3rd, 4th and 5th picks they gave up too.

 

2 hours ago, Billl said:

that was given up for two years of a cost controlled LT who won a ring.  Both teams benefited from the trade.l

 

As far as “cost controlled” goes… he had the 2nd highest base salary of all LT’s in the NFL last season. And the 5th highest cap hit of all LT’s.

 

For an average linemen.

 

KC got hosed.

[Malazan]

3 hours ago, Beck Water said:

??? By the Bye week?  Seriously?  Like, at the point of the season where we thumped the Steelers then beat the Chiefs in a pretty clean game where we had 125 yds rushing, Josh Allen only had 35 of those, 3 TD 0 INT 329 yds passing while picking Mahomes twice?

 

At that point, it was apparent to you that something was not right?

 

..and what happened next?

[GunnerBill]

10 hours ago, Magox said:

Sort of goes against the grain of the mainstream thinking.

 

 

 

I mean some of us have been saying this since the game finished. The players lost that game. They put out their worst effort of the entire year in the Divisional playoff round. People want to jump to play-calling and they want to jump to coaching and I understand they were not perfect. 

 

But that game was lost by the players on the field who (with a couple of noteable exceptions) played without any energy or desire. I don't know whether all the emotion of the season had zapped them, or if the injuries finally caught up with them or what the reason was. But the players played like *****. You could have had Bill Walsh and Bill Belichick calling plays on offense and defense respectively. It was a players defeat.

[Thurman#1]

12 hours ago, Einstein said:

Excuses.

 

We lost because the Bengals are the better team right now. From coaches to players.

 

 

Nonsense.

 

We're every bit as good of a roster.

 

And that's not an excuse. It's blaming themselves. That's the opposite of an excuse.

 

Taiwan is simply saying what a number of players said that day, that they had an awful game. That it seemed they just couldn't play their best, that they ran out of gas. None of them said that was OK or acceptable. But a bunch said that's what happened.  

 

Taiwan clearly agrees in the Dunne article.

 

 

After the game, we heard this:

 

---------------

"It was emotionally draining for obvious reasons, you guys all saw that," OL Rodger Saffold said. "I just kind of feel like we were tired. Guys were exhausted during the week and our coaches did the best they could to try to modify the week to get us back to stuff. But it was just uncharacteristic things that were kind of happening. So, I have to kind of put that into a factor, not as an excuse. This team has been fighting for so long and fighting through all this adversity, you run out of gas at some point."

----------------

"Guys just continued to fight and fight and a lot of it motivated us and just at the end we just ran out of gas," Hyde said. 

----------------

While not pointing to it as an excuse for the playoff defeat, WR Isaiah McKenzie, TE Dawson Knox and OL Rodger Saffold said the emotional toll of the season caught up with them.

When Allen was posed with his assessment on his teammates' point of view, he concurred with them.

"I can agree with that statement. I don't know for me personally. But, again, you gotta play your best against really good teams, and we didn't yesterday," Allen said.

 

 

6 hours ago, folz said:

Congrats to Tyler for actually getting me to click on and read the article, but what a waste of time.

 

I thought that maybe he had something new or interesting to say because of his Twitter post saying, "we've been having the wrong conversation" about the Bengals game, that he talked "In depth" with Taiwan, that Dunne was going to discuss a "philosophy change" for the team, and he apparently had a quote from Taiwan saying, "We were like deer in headlights."

 

First of all, that quote doesn't appear in the article, so did Taiwan actually say that? Why post it to your Twitter, but not have it in the article? Dunne added absolutely nothing new to the conversation about the Bengals game (same old rehash, and as much from a Bills fan as from the player he talked "in depth" to). And his philosophy change was to start scoring 50 points a game, oh and draft a WR in the first 4 rounds. Genius. And then the article ends with "Here's How." Is there more article behind a paywall, or was that it? If there is more, it isn't really that clear...and/or its a shameless cliff hanger to get people to subscribe. If not, then what a strange way to end an article.

 

Not that I should be disappointed by an article in the off-season, but wow.

 

 

 

 

It clearly said that there is more behind a paywall.

 

In what was there, it looked like Dunne was the one asking for a philosophy change, not Taiwan. So I'm with you that it was a bit frustrating getting less than what was teased.

 

That's the modern world, though.

 

Edited March 23, 2023 by Thurman#1

[Thurman#1]

53 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

I mean some of us have been saying this since the game finished. The players lost that game. They put out their worst effort of the entire year in the Divisional playoff round. People want to jump to play-calling and they want to jump to coaching and I understand they were not perfect. 

 

But that game was lost by the players on the field who (with a couple of noteable exceptions) played without any energy or desire. I don't know whether all the emotion of the season had zapped them, or if the injuries finally caught up with them or what the reason was. But the players played like *****. You could have had Bill Walsh and Bill Belichick calling plays on offense and defense respectively. It was a players defeat.

 

 

Yeah, that's the way it looked to me, even as the game was going on. Sure, the coaches weren't without blame. And yeah, the defensive injuries hurt a ton.

 

But the players just didn't play well enough. Even Allen. As you say, there were a few exceptions. But not many.

 

[Thurman#1]

5 hours ago, Malazan said:

 

..and what are they doing this offseason to ensure they're mentally prepared for a full season this time around? Also.. it didn't 'happen' in the playoffs. You can quibble about when it started, but by the bye week it was pretty apparent that something was not right. 

 

 

They did drop off a bit near there when Von Miller was inured in game 8, the first game after the break. They never looked to have nearly as effective a pass rush after that.

 

But the team overalll played well the last half of the season, especially considering all the injuries on defense.

 

Most of the season was after the bye week. Ten games, during which they went 8-2.

 

They were much much worse in the Bengals game than they'd been all season. Ten points, they scored there for Pete's sake. Ten points and 325. Their next worst scoring total was 17, and beyond that 19 in the 120 degrees on the sidelines in Miami game.

 

And it's not like Cincy was a sensational defense. They ranked 16th for the year. They're good, not great. We just played awful in 

 

1 hour ago, Malazan said:

 

..and what happened next?

 

 

They went 8-2 and won one playoff game.

 

He's right. The dropoff (beyond the effects of the loss of Miller) didn't happen there. It happened in the Cincinnati game.

[RunTheBall]

I think it’s pretty simple - the players ran out of gas and the gameplan sucked. Both Dorsey and Frazier were completely outmatched. Even if the players came out of the tunnel fired up and ready to go (which they clearly weren’t) I don’t think we win that game with game plan we had on both sides of the ball.

[BarleyNY]

12 hours ago, Einstein said:

  

 

If you fought Mike Tyson in his prime, you would look uninspired too.

 

It doesn't mean you weren't focused. Or that you were drained before the fight. It would be because he's that much better.

 

We all like to ignore it, but the Bengals were well on their way to blowing us out BEFORE the damar injury. They were up 7-3 and driving with ease again.

Theirs is something to this train of thought. Uninspired play can stem from knowing you can’t realistically compete. It doesn’t have to be one thing either - lack of talent on the field, poor game plan, mental or physical exhaustion, etc.

 

In this case we had a defense missing the one player who could consistently get to the QB. That’s not just bad luck either because that’s how it was constructed, which was at best risky. No adjustments or amount of blitzing made much difference. The coaching decision to play off of the WRs so much was also a killer. It was made worse by blitzing while DBs played off. Every player on the defense had to know that we’d never stop Cincy’s offense like that.

 

As for our offense - too many home run balls and not enough taking what was given underneath (like Cincy did), hot read failures, poor execution and lack of running game doomed that side of the ball. A lack of talent on that side of the ball compared to Cincy didn’t help either.

Edited March 23, 2023 by BarleyNY

[Don Otreply]

7 hours ago, JohnNord said:

Not what Taiwan said… he doesn’t blame play calling.  He said it comes down to the players 

TJ does have a vested interest in not getting himself fired for calling out his coaches, so what else would anyone expect him to say? It’s a toting the company line stuff, 

[BuffaloBill]

12 hours ago, Last Guy on the Bench said:

It was just so strange. I still have a bad hangover from that game - I'm not as into the draft as I usually am, I'm following the news less avidly. I'll spring back, I'm sure. I love this effing team too much. But it was almost inexplicable. Not losing. Just the way they lost. I can see why Taiwan is baffled. I'm sure a lot of the players are. Humans are complicated. Human collectives are even more complicated.

 

I do think there is something to the fact that the year finally caught up with them and against a team that was primed and energized and a bad matchup anyway. It happens in sports. It happens in life. I expect them to come out swinging again. McD has his weaknesses, but leaning into adversity and jumping back up off the canvas is not one of them. So I'm very keen to see how they respond and what their vibe is to start the year.

I could not agree more.

 

[Billl]

5 hours ago, Einstein said:

 

You forgot the 3rd, 4th and 5th picks they gave up too.

 

 

As far as “cost controlled” goes… he had the 2nd highest base salary of all LT’s in the NFL last season. And the 5th highest cap hit of all LT’s.

 

For an average linemen.

 

KC got hosed.

I didn’t forget anything.  You, however, seem to have forgotten that the 5th round pick went from Baltimore to KC, not the other way around.  The full compensation package netted out to the draft value equivalent of a mid second round pick.