ESPN DOWN GRADES BENGALS DUE TO HEAD COACH

[Shake n Blake]

(07-22-2017, 09:09 AM)SHRacerX Wrote: I get it.  This is why most look at the Bengals as "pretenders", but it you go year by year and really look at what happened, I don't think it should matter:

Year 1- We were thrilled to be there.  A 9-7 team with a rookie QB and a TON of youth.  Get some experience.  Playing with house money.

Year 2- Houston again.  The team makes it closer, but the offensive scheme is to avoid their #1 weapon and Gresham is, well, Gresham, and drops about 5 catchable balls.  They weren't going to make the big game this year, but they could have beaten the Texans.

Year 3- The Chargers, at home.  Everyone assumed this would be the easy win.  And it might have been had Geno not been injured and the Chargers pounded the Bengals in their running game.  Dalton was not good, with two INTs and a fumble, but he did throw for 332 yards.  Gio's fumble at the opponents 5 yard line was a critical mistake.  Team loss.  All three phases sucked.  So did the coaching.  This is one that really, really hurt.

Year 4- At Indy-  The M*A*S*H unit game.  Rex Burkhead got his first shot as slot WR.  Brandon Tate was a starting WR.  AJ Green, Gresham, and others were all out for this game.  Dalton was solid, but the defense couldn't stop anything.   This one was probably the least painful of them all.

Year 5-  pitt at Home.  The worst officiated game of all time (I know, wah, dry your eyes).  Disgusting game on both sides of the field.  This game was over.  Done.  The playoff monkey was exercised...with our backup QB!  And you know how it ended.  

I will not hold this team accountable for the 2005 and 2009 losses, as there is almost no one from those teams left.  In fact, I think there is no one.

These five losses are understandable in three cases, one sucked big time (SD), and one was an absolute rectal (pitt...why would we expect anything else?).  So, I really only see one game where the Bengals should have been able to outplay and beat handily the opponent.  One game.  Gio fumbled.  Geno was injured.  Dalton fumbled.  It was a bad game.  I am not going to paint them in to a corner based on what is really one bad game.  

I'm not saying no one else should.  I get it, but to say their playoff record is why they won't go anywhere this year (PFT, etc) is no different than saying they have a team of thugs, and should all be in jail.   That is ancient history.  This year, they will prove it.  

Like I said..."if's and but's". Maybe you can excuse 1 or 2, but after that it just starts sounding like excuses. Something has to be systematically wrong for 7 straight playoff losses to happen. We're setting records for a reason. The wrong kind of records.

And with all the excuses, I start to notice that we only look at our own team...we don't consider what the opponent was dealing with...

Texans 1: Yeah we were supposed to be bad and were starting a rookie QB. Does anyone realize that the Texans were coming off a 6-10 season and were starting a TON of young players and rookies...including a terrible rookie QB with 5 starts?

Texans 2: We shouldn't have focused on Gresham in the game plan. That was a coaching error. The Texans were without Brian Cushing and were dealing with Schaub's sudden decline.

Chargers: Yeah we were missing Atkins. If we can't survive the loss of 1 player, we'll never win a playoff game. The Chargers were road dogs playing a team they'd already lost to at home.

Colts: Yeah we were hurting at receiver (although we did have Sanu), but the Colts were hurting badly at RB. They were down to their 3rd and 4th stringers. 

Steelers: Yeah we were without Andy. The Steelers were down an MVP caliber RB, his backup (DeAngelo Williams), were rotating RBs you'll have to google, were without Ben for 3 drives, without Pro-Bowler Maurkice Pouncey, on the road etc.

And this is only touching on the last 5 games. We all know that we've seen the same dead offense, defense that loses it's bite, and inability to put together 2 halves of football in all 7 games.

We've got to stop excusing it.