Can Andy and the Bengals finally win a playoff game?

[Luvnit2]

(07-10-2015, 12:14 PM)djs7685 Wrote: 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.

 I thought the defense played very well in the first half, no doubt, but they still were getting pushed around in the run game.

Of course AD and the offense played well in the first half of the 2013 game as well until the Gio fumble.

The Chargers had a game plan to run the ball, in spite of first down success early they stuck with it. I remember this game vividly as I was there with 11 of my friends. We were discussing our concern for the 3, 4 and 5 yard runs in the first half. There was a reason the Chargers did not have a lot of yards overall, they chose to go 3 to 4 yards and a cloud of dust versus a vertical passing attack.

The defense made no defensive adjustments, the  offense sputtered and T.O.P. escalated. Yes, the offense bears some of the issue with their inability to get first downs and not turn the ball over. Yes, the defense shares blame due to poor 3rd down defense (stopping them and making them punt).

I never said the defense did nothing. I did day they also did not play as well as normal (regular season) and nowhere close to dominant or better than the norm as they made zero big plays to turn the tide.