12-30-2019, 11:24 PM
(12-30-2019, 08:01 PM)BengalChris Wrote: The defense, over the past 6 weeks only went up against 1 winning team (New England). It got the snot kicked out of by Miami, a team that was winless half way through the season and which traded away its best players.
Yes, the defense looked better, but the team decided to run Mixon more as well, which shortens the possessions of the other team.
You have to take the season as a whole to grade the team, and it grades out at the bottom of the NFL, as indicated by its record.
There's no magic goodness from this season that's going to spring up to make it all good.
The LBers aren't good, as indicated by their lack of tackles and the secondary having to cover up for this. Dunlap plays great against OTs he can beat, but he does disappear too often. To go to a 3-4 they'd need 3 new LBers or maybe Hubbard would be an outside LB. Dunlap is a 4-3 DE all the way. Atkins would be a DE in a 3-4 scheme.
I'm not saying everything is hopeless and bad, but when you are dead last, a great deal needs fixing in the off-season. They went backwards this year, but the team doesn't seem to see it, even though basically everyone else does.
Points allowed over the last 4 weeks:
27
34
38
23
Guess I'm not seeing the massive improvement, either. The defense had a good 3 week stretch against the Raiders, Jets and a decimated Steelers team. Other than that, we were pretty gross all year. No other games where we allowed less than 21 points.
The training, nutrition, medicine, fitness, playbooks and rules evolve. The athlete does not.
