What can Bengals do now to make fans happy about 2019 offseason?

[t3r3e3]

(03-23-2019, 04:55 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: You like to make a lot of assumptions, I get that.  However, at the onset of the season, Preston Brown looked great, and nobody had a clue that Burfict would come out looking like the Cowardly Lion..   What Terryl Austin was trying to do with the secondary playing Zone just wasn't working, but the DL looked very effective until Lawson was lost. 

It's also funny how that line that sucked, looked perfectly adequate, when all of the offense was healthy.  They were 4-1, and damn close to beating the Steelers and being 5-1.

I'm not making any excuses, just giving a more accurate accounting that a simple "they sucked" and "they also sucked".  Without all of the injuries, I see last year's Bengals as a 10 win team.  Evidently Coach Taylor sees the same thing, as he gushes about the offensive talent the Bengals have.

Going into the season the Bengals had arguably the worst coverage linebackers in the entire NFL. Brown and Burfict, the two best linebackers on the roster, are/were liabilities in coverage. The rest of the LB corps was populated by plodders and middling athletes, save for Jefferson and Evans.

The NFL is a passing league. The Bengals LB unit hasn’t been able to cover anyone for the past 7-8 seasons. The LB corps was a glaring weakness going into 2018, and odds were, just like the line, they were going to be bad. None of these “assumptions” should surprise anyone who watches the team.

It’s hard to be a ten win team when you can’t hold up at the point of attack and get gashed by RB’s/TE’s and slot WR’s over the middle. Given the team’s 3rd place schedule, 7-9 to 8-8 is a pretty accurate representation of the team’s chances in 2018. Unless the line and LB corps is fixed in 2019, 7-9 to 8-8 will again be the most probable outcome. I hope they win ‘em all, but I don’t see a legitimate Playoff team unless the C/right side of line and LB corps are significantly improved. So far they haven’t done much to move the needle on either.