Why do you feel optimistic about this Bengals team relative to prior years?

[McC]

(05-22-2015, 05:09 PM)wolfkaosaun Wrote: And I agree, but this past year they forced into Dalton's mind "Don't make the mistake"; which appeared to override his "make a play" mentality that we needed in certain games.

He was a gun-slinger in 2013. I prefer that to the game manager they tried to make him be last season. Sure, he threw for a little more than 100 attempts that year, but he had the least amount of passing attempts (481) in his entire career. His 2nd lowest? 516 his rookie season.

While there should be more emphasis on the running game this next year, I don't believe that forcing that mindset into Dalton helps him as much as it should.

It didn't help him at all. It hurt his confidence, made him tighten up. If he's your guy, you have to let him do it with a balanced attack and forget the fear of failure. I agree with run heavy but you have to be able to sling it too.

Will be interesting to see how they use Eifert and the new TE's. A good TE is a QB's best friend. So important to have receivers other than AJ that he trusts.

But you can't go out of your way to take the ball out of the QB's hands. That's a flashing neon light that tells the defense how to play you.