Can the Bengals compete in the AFCN

[Joelist]

I am of the opinion that Mayfield is overrated. When you look at his season outside of the two games against our historically bad defense and one against the similarly bad Falcons defense he was extremely average at best; in fact in their finale the Rats made him look like he didn't belong in the league.

Lamar (Terrell Pryor II) Jackson? Let's see what happens when all the teams they play scheme to take away his running and dare him to win by throwing.

The Stealers need to show they have another WR to go with JuJu and they lost other players as well. But to me they are the most likely to do well.

On our front, all the coaching changes and upcoming system changes make it hard to forecast. A LOT of our issues arose from coaching problems such as game preparation, failure to scheme to highlight what our players do well and just being outcoached on the sidelines. For example, let's look at the Offensive Line.

If we stay in a zone blocking scheme then we probably are going to have issues, as only Boling is actually suited to such a scheme. Everyone else they currently have (Price, Glenn, Miller, Hart and even Redmond) are better suited to drive blocking. I have to think ZT plans on going to a power scheme as it would also explain the visit of Jordan Mills.

Then there is LB. Will a new LB coach help our players develop better? To be honest, all too often last season it looked like Vigil was playing LB by himself as Nickerson and Evans looked totally clueless out there and Brown was hurt most of the season. Give us that early round LB combined with a healthy Brown and better LB coaching and the different to the defense will be huge. So long of course as our new DC realizes his secondary is filled with players much better in man coverage than in zone...