04-30-2021, 09:59 AM
The nice thing is that the Bengals will effectively make themselves the poster children of the growing debate about what matters most in the modern era of professional football.
"You build from the inside out" is rationale that has reigned for decades, and I agreed with it myself for the vast majority of my own time as a fan. But pretty much every advanced metric designed to describe the football played in 2021 has turned that on its head, to such a degree that wide receivers are graded at higher value than blindside tackles. It sounds like sacrilege in much the same way that sabermetrics sounded stupid to old fogeys in baseball... until it was proven right. If the advanced metrics are right again in this case, the Bengals will be the team leading that argument.
"You build from the inside out" is rationale that has reigned for decades, and I agreed with it myself for the vast majority of my own time as a fan. But pretty much every advanced metric designed to describe the football played in 2021 has turned that on its head, to such a degree that wide receivers are graded at higher value than blindside tackles. It sounds like sacrilege in much the same way that sabermetrics sounded stupid to old fogeys in baseball... until it was proven right. If the advanced metrics are right again in this case, the Bengals will be the team leading that argument.
