11-02-2022, 03:01 PM
(11-02-2022, 01:22 PM)Whatever Wrote: There's a huge issue with the argument that talent is carrying Taylor. Last year, everyone predicted that we would be battling for the #1 overall pick, not the Lombardi. That's based on what our talent level was evaluated at.
*****
I don't like to be "that guy", but this board as a whole has vastly overrated our players for years. ****
That's true. And this year the oddsmakers had the Bengals third in the division and 12th in the league prior to Watson's suspension being raised from 6 to 11 games. And then they still placed the Bengals behind Baltimore in the Division. Other analysts assessing the Bengals don't see the team as having SuperBowl-level talent. The Bengals didn't have anyone in the top 10 of NFL.com's top 100 and only Chase in the top 20 (18th). The OL doesn't have a single probowler.
Maybe we can think the analysts are underratingthe Bengals talent, that we are this elite group, but maybe we are overrating the talent. What the Bengals did last year is play well as a group and overcome in-game adversity, such as falling behind 21-3 to KC in the game at KC and still believing in themselves and coming back. I don't think we can say that the coaches put us in a 21-3 bind and then the players alone overcame and brought the team back. The coaches deserve a lot of credit for last year.
If one goes by the NFL and ESPN top-100 and probowl voting, then the Bengals have two truly elite players: Chase and Burrow. There are some very good players, such as Reader and Hendrickson and Bell and Awuzie and McPherson (normally, not so far this year). But most analysts put the talent level near or out of the top 10, not like they rate the talent level of Buffalo and KC, for example. (Of course, right now the Bengals are missing three of their best players, in Chase, Reader, and Awuzie, so I would be curious where analysts see the talent level at this minute.)
We cannot discount the fact that a team expected to do poorly last year played in the Super Bowl and then say that the players did this despite the coaches. The team includes the coaches.
