Wade Phillips wants a job

[Bengalholic]

(01-18-2021, 05:05 PM)Au165 Wrote: This goes to the horrible stat Lapham used to use about “when X gets Y carries the Bengals are such and such”. Teams that are ahead tend to run more than teams that are trailing. It would then stand to reason that teams who are well out ahead give up less rushing yards because teams have to chase, and they run more to shorten the game. If you look at the teams left in the playoffs, I saw a stat this morning that all 4 are top 6 in essentially first down passing adjusted for a non favorable situation or basically taking out 1st and goal from the one. Basically, teams that pass and don’t just run to open drives have had great success this season. Passing wins in the league right now and stopping the pass far outweighs stopping the run because the run is best stopped as a function of the score.

Yes, teams that trail on a regular basis tend to be rushed on more. Those teams generally also have trouble stopping the run, which plays a big part in those same teams losing a lot of games. It's one thing for a team to run on you when they're up. It's another thing to not be able to do anything about it.

Look back at the Bengals-Steelers games over the past couple of decades. How many times did the Steelers get up and then take over the game by running the ball at will. Being able to run the ball when you have to is still an important part of the game. Not being able to stop the run in those situations as a defense is going to guarantee losses much of the time.

More than that, and we've heard players talk about it, getting run on at will is demoralizing to a defense.