Why do you feel optimistic about this Bengals team relative to prior years?

[*SHRacerX*]

(05-21-2015, 09:07 AM)djs7685 Wrote: They won regular season games with Sanu/Tate/Sanzenbacher as the receivers. I understand there were a few other injuries along the way, but it was definitely a disappointment that they didn't even look competitive in the playoff game. I didn't expect a win, but I also didn't want to see them looking like they weren't even trying either.


They signed Denarius Moore at WR. I don't know how amazing of a signing that will end up being, but it addressed their need to take the top off the defense.


The Bengals averaged 10 wins, not Andy. Let's not forget that this is the ultimate team game that we're talking about here.

I can agree with a less than stellar running game for the first couple of years, but this team had a top 10 or even top 5 defense for Andy's first 3 years. The Bengals have also been well known to having one of the best offensive lines in the game in recent memory. They didn't have a lot of injuries in these years and they still had a top of the line defense and o-line play, so I don't know how you can complain about a "thin roster".

I'm a believer in Andy for 2015, I think he'll have a fine year, but I'm not going to make up lies about our team over the past 4 years. You can't have All-Pros at every position, but the Bengals have done a damn good job at putting together a solid roster from 2011-present time. They may have been a bit overrated in Jungle Noise over the years, but that's just homers being homers. I'm not saying it's a good team to ridicule Andy, I just refuse to say that we have a mediocre or worse team just to make Andy seem like he came in here and has been the entire reason the team has won so many games. I'll give the defense and superb ST unit a good amount of the credit for the team's accomplishments, but Andy, AJ, and company have done their part as well.

They did win a game in the regular season without their full complement of weapons, but losing the heart of the defense, AJ, Jones, Eifert, Gresham, Andre, and others was just too much.

With respect to D. Moore, I don't see him making much, if any, impact.

As far as your mini-rant of "The team got 10 wins, not Dalton", and your praise of the defense: Do yourself a favor and go back and look at what the defense has done (or should I say, not done) in the four playoff losses. They were awful in every single one. Even worse than their statistical performance was the fact that in each loss, you saw an opponent go maximum protection and the Bengals defense have ZERO answer for it. No pressure whatsoever.

You seemed very defensive about my comment that the roster was "thin". I didn't mean to imply that the team had no talent, but they didn't have much depth of talent. Thin. Look at what the LB corps looked like without Burfict. What WR was able to get separation other than AJ and that was when he wasn't going against a top 5 CB. He had one of the lowest YPC running games in the entire NFL for the first three years of his career. I hardly consider a team with one top talent at WR, no running game (until Hill's emergence), and a bumbling, stumbling TE as a loaded roster.

The original question was why are you optimistic and I replied that I liked the depth that was added to the roster in key spots and Dalton has more depth at the TE position and got Marvin Jones back. I also had the audacity to complement Dalton and state my belief of what he can do in the future as reasons for my optimism.