Off by a lot

[*SHRacerX*]

(12-22-2020, 06:15 PM)fredtoast Wrote: I'll eat crow on this one also.  I didn't see anyway the Bengals could even cover the -14.5.

But our O-line didn't maul anyone.  We had 230 yards of offense, and our 3 first half scoring drives covered a combined 68 yards.  

Our RBs averaged 3.3 per carry.  

ProFootballReference credits the Steelers with 6 QB hits (knocking QB to ground after pass attempts) and 2 sacks on just 13 pass attempts.  Even taking into account the Steelers #1 ranked pass rush those are horrible numbers. Pittsburgh is leading the league in sacks by getting one every ten attempts, and they did much better than that against us with 1 every 6.5.

Twenty percent of our total offense was rushing yards by Ryan Finley.  

Roethlisberger played like he was hungover the first half and we ended up winning the turnover ratio 3 to 0.  Our O-line looked better in run blocking, but still not really impressive.  And they got chewed up by the pass rush.

This sort of leads me to the discussion that I mentioned earlier about not having better balance with the rushing attack earlier in the season.  The Bengals would run 3-4 times in the beginning of a game, and even in situations where it worked fairly well, they still abandon it and air it out as thought ZT said:  "Ok, we are warmed up...let's start playing now".

Those early runs that yield 2-3 yards often become 4-6 yard runs later in the game.  Most importantly, with the exception of Jonah Williams, every one of the offensive linemen were rated significantly better at run blocking than pass blocking.  Playing with more balance would have kept opposing defenses from teeing off on Burrow.  Joe with more play action and against defenses that played with no concern for the run at all?  Yes, please.  

The second half of the 2019 season showed the Bengals capable of putting together a solid rushing attack.  That never really returned this season.  All this just raises more questions for me about the coaching of the line and the decisions in the play selection.  

Your points here are dead on, though.  I never thought they would even get 1 YPC against that defensive front.  When you factor in the QB rushes, the entire team averaged 3.7 YPC.  Not too shabby given their absolute fear of letting Finley throw the ball.  It was like a polar opposite of their normal pass-happy offense.  My wish it that the two would meet somewhere more in the middle.  

Maybe they were trying to evaluate Burrow's strengths, etc?  Perhaps.  They invested in Mixon and I feel like they will have invested in the offensive line before 2021.  I wish for a better balance in the offense moving forward.