07-10-2015, 12:14 PM
(07-10-2015, 11:57 AM)Luvnit2 Wrote: I give you the defensive performance in the 2012 Texan playoff loss was good enough to win and close to on par of how the defense performed in the regular season.
In 2013, I disagree as the defense was killed in T.O.P. for 2 reasons, the offensive game plan changed to throw the ball 34 times which was a very bad game plan by Gruden. Second, our run defense was horrible (far worse than the 2013 regular season run defense) and it started early and often as Rivers early in the game would run 2 running plays for 7 or 8 yards and then be in short 3rd down situations.
Our defense's inability to stop the run and force Rivers to throw hurt our chances to win that game. This has nothing to do with the AD second half performance, yes he was bad also, AJ Green was too dropping a TD pass with 6 minutes to go and down 10.
I believe if we could have forced the Chargers and Rivers into more 3rd and long situations, the pass rush with our crowd noise would have been a factor. Our pass rush was a non factor the entire game as Rivers was able to dunk and dink due to the porous run defense.
So, in my opinion our defense has had one year out of 4 where they equaled their regular season defensive performance. That is my issue, no unit steps up in the playoffs and takes over a game consistently.
I completely agree that none of the units stepped it up and played extraordinarily well in any of the games, no one ever took over a game and looked like they were going to really win it for the other side of the ball. You would think with 4 tries, at least one side would have at least once or twice.
I don't know if I agree about the 2013 defense though, you can't expect a team to give up 0 yards, so IMO it's just nitpicking to bring up a handful of plays that the entire defense fall apart a little bit, especially seeing as they didn't give up a lot of points in those situations. They had one drive in the first half that even remotely fits the description you laid out of the inability to stop the run. 12 plays, 6:56, 86 yard TD drive in the first quarter. Those are the only points the Bengals' D gave up in the first half. Here are the other SD drives in the entire first half....
5 plays, 10 yards, punt
3 plays, 8 yards, punt
3 plays, 9 yards, punt
4 plays, 1 yard, punt
28 yards and 4 punts off of 4 drives is pretty good, right?
The offense opens the second half with the offense not being able to do anything after a BJGE 12 yard run. Run up the gut, Andy scramble for a couple of yards, then a sack.
The defense gets the ball back, they give up another bad drive, 80 yard TD that eats over 5 minutes.
The offense breaks down, Gio, Andy, and the rest of the crew just blow the game from here. Fumble, INT, INT, downs, downs, game over.
The defense at this point? They give up a total of 50 yards on 4 Chargers drives while the offense is trying as hard as possible to give the game away, this is until the long run at the very end of the game in garbage time when it's already over on their last drive of the game.
Please look all of that over, and maybe you'll start to remember the game a bit better since it's been a while. Other than 2 bad drives, the defense was doing everything it could to stay in this game. I'm NOT blaming Andy solely for this, don't think that I am, I'm putting this loss primarily on the offense though. Gio, Andy, A.J., Gruden, Marvin, and anybody else involved. This isn't an Andy bashing post, this is an offense bashing post. The defense absolutely held up in this game a LOT better than some seem to remember.
