My Theory as to our Offensive Ineptitude

[WeezyBengal]

(09-19-2022, 11:52 AM)Au165 Wrote: I’ll give my ”football guy” take.

The reason they are running so much early is because teams are giving us two high looks. Essentially this means that the safeties are for the most part out of the run game and you should have an advantage in the box for blocking. Teams are doing this because it’s letting them take the deep game away and requires us to run well and be patient which we have have proven to be neither. This is the exact same thing the Chiefs experienced last year and struggled with early in the season.

The blocking issues are a combination of poor communication, for example the no attempt on Parsons where Collins blocked down instead of out appeared to be that he didn’t get the call. Bengals had moved Sample down on an “Ali” check which means he’d take the first double mug defender and punch them in the mouth allowing the others to fan outward. I don’t know how loud it was in there but there were multiple times you could see Joe talking to a lineman and pointing at his ears as to say “listen”.

The bigger issue is they know teams are giving them variations of cover 2 but haven’t done anything to attack cover two. Last week we went with a smash concept to open the game and it got picked, but the concept was right it was just a great play by Fitzpatrick. We went back to it only once by my count this week and it did work. Additionally they need to run more clear outs, the short middle is open and we see Chase have success with the slants but why we go away from it I have no clue. If they’d set Hurst inside and run a streak to carry the middle defender it would be even more open for running after the catch.

Bottom line there are issues all over the offense. They almost need to scrap the whole thing and start over but that’s a tough thing to do in season.

Side note: thought I posted this an hour ago and just noticed it not posted so apologies if most of this has been hashed out now.

I think is pretty much spot on. 

To me, a lot of that comes down to ZT, play design, and his overall offense. It's a disaster right now.