08-16-2021, 01:21 PM
(08-15-2021, 12:24 PM)kevin Wrote: OK, fine. I've changed name of thread. Instead of How Did Bengals Look In Preseason Game One ?, that is gone. Replaced by Run Blocking and Runners looked Weak To Me. Now on this people can either agree or disagree. That was my take on the game. I saw no improvement on Run Blocking in the 1st Half from the last few years awful run blocking.
Overall, I thought the 1st unit - for what little they were on the field looked Ok. We honestly didn't get a good look at how things will play out for the 1st team based on last nights game. Having the 1st team OL, Burrow, Mixon in for a good part of the 1st half (not saying we should have done that by any means) would have given us a MUCH better view.
Otherwise, we saw that the OL is improving and their footwork was MUCH improved over last year. Their hand placement is coming, but they overall looked better. Is it good enough? hard to say as of yet because we were letting the 2nd, 3rd teams and others get reps in and see how they compete. However, it was good to see the OL starting to show they are being coached correctly and with some technique. They've had 2 years of Turner's crap. It's going to take Pollack more then a few weeks to get that corrected.
Two interesting things that we saw during this preseason game was:
- Ration of run vs. pass over the course of the game. The play calling was more in favor of running the ball vs. passing. That could have been due to adjustments in play calling due to the players, but is hopefully a trend we will see even when Burrow is in.
- They stuck with the running game - even if it was struggling early on and managed to break off some decent runs in the second half/later in the game.
