6 hours ago
(Today, 02:08 AM)Bengalbug Wrote: Was 4.2 in 2022 and 4.3 in 2021.. yards per attempt.
I’m really not trying to throw shade at reader, or give praise to rankins. It is really about the same as it has always been, except the bengals have not won some of the close games. If we win 2 of the close games and we are sitting at 6-4, we are not sitting here talking about a lot of this stuff.
Regular season bengals have always been on the arm of burrow, defense has been a liability for the duration of Zac/lou tenure, especially in the regular season.
Honestly if we could just make some plays in the 2nd half of games on Defense this team could be 6-4 no problem.
Might be too little too late, but as far as the young players, whoever we get to replace Lou at DC and Hobby at DL coach they shouldn't be in a
terrible spot and as long we give them some good FA's to replace Rankins and Geno Stone and we Draft decent we could be right back to where
we were being a contender again with Burrow and Chase to continue to build around.
As TLL and you say Bengalbug, under Lou, the Defense hasn't been good except for making big plays when it mattered and that was years back.
One thing about Reader when he was here, he could make some big plays stopping the run. He isn't the same for the Lions right now and maybe
McKinnley Jackson can be this type of NT down the road. I like what I have seen from him as a rookie, he has just been hurt for most of the year.
(Today, 05:43 AM)Isaac Curtis: The Real #85 Wrote: Bates to Hill to Scott to Stone.
Reader to Rankins.
Mixon to Moss.
Awuzie to CTB.
Bell to Scott to older Bell.
Boyd to Iosivas.
Now, there have been some upgrades. But most of those have been negated by injuries. OT, with OBJ + Trent Brown + Mims is better. But 2 guys are hurt. Ditto TE, where Gesicki + All was an upgrade, but the magnitude of it dropped with All hurt. Hill's move to CB was looking like a beight spot until he went down. An Apple upgrade for sure. And healthy Higgins to hurt Higgins is hurting us as well.
Scott, Stone and Rankins have been huge disappointments for us in FA.
Some downgrades for sure and a few upgrades with injuries being the dark cloud on them. Trent Brown got hurt early but that allowed
Mims to step in and he is having a pretty damn good rookie year and is already an upgrade over Jonah. Bring back Gesicki and I like our
TE's and we can even add another one for insurance with Erick All always tearing his ACL's, poor dude. Hudson is still good finding holes
in Zone coverage and will always be cheap with his age.
Replacing Stone and Rankins should be easy with how overly paid they are it will free up a lot of dough cutting them. I like some players
that are here already in replacing them in Battle/Tycen and Kris Jenkins.
