Just happened upon this video, and it's quite illuminating.

It was by no means an egregious call, but if offside was reviewable Pratt's TD should have stood.

Sounds like Sydney Jones from the PS might get a call up this week

-At corner, Sidney Jones IV may play a role. He praised Jones for being everything they could ask for as a veteran in a season on the practice squad.

-The run defense came down to two big plays: A missed tackle and a gap that a safety didn't fill. Growing pains in the secondary

— Charlie Goldsmith (@CharlieG__) December 19, 2023

I took a really deep dive into the Bengals playoff probabilities. I studied an app that calculates a teams playoff chances based on the results of other games. I took every game that would have any effect on the Bengals from now through week 17 and picked a winner and loser in each case. In each case, I made the outcome to be the worst possible scenario for our Bengals. In other words, the teams I picked to win lessened the likelihood of the Bengals playoff hopes. If we beat Pittsburgh, lose to KC, and everything thing else goes into the crapper for us, we will have a slightly less than 1 in 4 chance of making the playoffs going in to Week 18.

But don't despair, Bengals fans, mathematicians don't stop at Week 17. I have some good news. A win over the Browns in Week 18 and our chances go back up to about where they are right now--- 37%. Our playoff hopes will be determined by the outcomes of four games in week 18. Here are those games:

1. Jaguars at Titans

2. Texans at Colts

3. Bills at Dolphins

4. Broncos at Raiders

The Bengals want the home team to win in each of these games(Assuming the Texans beat the Browns this week). Now, there are 16 combinations(2^4) of how those four games can go. For example , if G= Good 4 Bengals ; B= Bad 4 Bengals , then GGGG means all four went in the Bengals favor. GGBB means the first two went the Bengals way but the last two did not. Of these 16 combinations, six of them gets the Bengals into the playoffs: GGGG , GGGB, GGBG, GBGG, BGGG, and BBGG. Notice that five of the six require three of the four games going the Bengals way. Only one, the BBGG, requires just two of the four going in favor of our beloved Black & Orange. A Dolphins win at home over the Bills  and a Raiders win in Vegas over the Broncos would get it done, regardless of what happens in the other two.

What does this all mean? Short of winning out, the Bengals are going to, most certainly, needs some help in Week 18. The good news is, none of those four games would require a major upset of any sort. Those are all games that could go either way. Also, the teams the Bengals would be rooting for in that quad of games will all be the home teams(unless the Browns beat the Texans this week, in which case we'd want the Texans to win at the Colts in Week 18).

In conclusion ,unless all three of those early games go the Bengals way, it's gonna likely come down to the Broncos at Raiders in determining the Bengals fate. After the Bengals win in the Jungle in Week 18, take off your Bengals gear and put on the Black & Silver paint and become a Raiders fan for three hours!!!

Btw, in my scenario I projected the Texans over the Browns this week. This results in us needing a Colts win at home in Week 18. If, however, the Browns beat the Texans this week, then we will need to root for the Texans to beat the Colts in week 18. I personally like the former scenario better than the latter. I want to be rooting for all four of those home teams in Week 18.

Questions/ comments?

This team is stacked we might have best offensive line in entire NFL right now and with a CTB returning we have 4 quality CB in the secondary. We could still potentially win a SB this season even with adversity and injuries.

Are we ready to close the book on him yet?

He's been an absolute ghost this year. I, like many, had high expectations for him coming into the year after he "kind of" flashed last year...but he's been a major dissapointment.

Looking back, I think the writing is on the wall from some organizational moves that he just may not be the guy. Extending Hendrickson and drafting Murphy in the first round is what I'm talking about.

Murphy has been increasing his snap count as the season goes on and Ossai has been decreasing his. He's only played in about 10% of the defensive snaps over the last few games and he didn't even record a snap in the Steelers game.

He's only 23 and Im not sure if he's been battling injury or what - but he's only got another year left on his rookie contact...time to put up.

So, do we try to go out and pick a guy up to plug into the rotation ?
Or... do you think our young guys are ready ?
Is our locker room tight knit and mature enough to handle somebody like Ndamukong Suh coming in.
I guess he's petitioning teams currently.
Is there anyone out there that "fits" ?

Sent from my SM-S515DL using Tapatalk

“It was as hard fought a game as I have ever been a part of.”

From BJ Hill’s bizarre interception to Tee Higgins & Tyler Boyd’s clutch catches — Zac Taylor’s take on the Bengals crazy comeback win. pic.twitter.com/omJUwwnyUr

— Charlie Clifford (@char_cliff) December 18, 2023

I don't intend this to be a negative thread. I just wanted to bring up a couple of things and I thought we could put positive or negative things we've noticed.

But a common criticism I have had of Zac is his situational football. I think trick plays and short yardage gimmick plays fall under that umbrella. Taylor deserves a ton of credit for the team rallying around Browning and has silenced many of the doubters myself included. But these last few games while great we still have bad situational football. I keep hoping we will improve in this regard but it doesn't seem to be happening. The trick plays against Jax were bad and they've been talked about. But again in this game we come up with another bad trick play that could've cost us the game. Maybe like all plays you can say if it works your a genius if it doesn't your dumb. But the trick play came at the end of a solid 1st drive in a time when most teams have scripted plays on a 3rd and 1 when the offense had been moving effectively. I mean the list goes on and on why that was not a good time to run a play like that. Another play I didn't like was the tush push. I felt not only were we running well but it was not a play we should be trying in a time when we absolutely need it. Luckily Mixon bailed us out. But I think that tends to happen with failed situational football if you win it doesn't matter and if you lose there were more reasons for the loss. It's just something I think we need to address in the future as so many games come down to a field goal.

I missed the 1st 3 qtrs live and have since rewatched the game and I do want to say that it was probably one of the most exciting 4th qtrs I've seen in what feels like a while. But I also feel like we didn't scheme this game as much for Browning as we did in the 2 other games. Again the coaches deserve a ton of credit but in this game I think it was the players that really bailed us out.

Mason Rudolph will start against the Bengals. He didn't look any better against the Colts than Trubinsky did.

edit: starting safety Domontae Kazee has been suspended for the remainder of the 2023 season including playoffs for repeated violations of player safety rules. The other safety Minkah Fitzpatrick left the Colts game with a knee injury. They are really really thin in the DB

Anyone pick up on what they actually said? I’m at work so can’t turn it up.
Pace made some nice plays but Mixon won the big battle at the goal line when he had free shot at him.

https://www.si.com/nfl/bengals/news/joe-mixon-exchanges-words-ivan-pace-jr-following-bengals-win-over-vikings