Notes From Training Camp 2025

[Essex Johnson]

(Yesterday, 02:07 PM)rfaulk34 Wrote: Yes, that's well and good...


He said the backups were going to end up biting us. I said, just like they did in the SB and AFCCG. There was no talk of micro, macro, how healthy, making the playoffs, any of that. No specualtion, luck or happenstance. 

Just that having not good backups are going to bite you in the worst moments, specifically. Like it did for the Bengals, specifically, in 2021 and 2022. Relevant, history repeating itself, learn from your mistakes, etc, etc. 

EDIT: backup Oline.

You could argue without a backup we don;t get to SB, BJ Hill was a backup that saved us in playoffs.  We were playing the SB with I believe 19 of the starters pretty much from beginning of year, so not buying that backups cost us a SB and we had a weak Oline even with starters, so the pressure on Joe in SB was not that much different than the season or playoffs,  the 2021 team was really still rebuilding the roster, no one expected us to go from 4 wins in 2020 to SB in 2021 season... Im sure you could pick top tier team coming into this season and find a few holes in their backups, it is hard to afford and draft well enough to have solid backups across the board.  I will agree i would like to see a bit more depth on the Oline but our defense cost us a run to playoffs last year over our Oline.