GOOD or BAD? NFL SHUTDOWN!

[Benton]

(11-28-2020, 12:05 PM)Fan_in_Kettering Wrote: My biggest fear is this off-season will look a lot like last off-season; full of hope, lots of activity in free agency, and a decent draft. Unfortunately, none of this resulted in wins which to me is abject failure.   We have to examine why this particular off-season model failed. I think I have the answer.

Bad coaching.

Let’s take Joe Burrow out of this equation please. He is such a good player I believe he is completely immune to bad coaching even though he is still a victim of bad playcalling.  The rest of the team, however, needs to be up for examination. If you watch tape on Von Bell in New Orleans or Mackensie Alexander in Minnesota or even Billy Price at Ohio State or Jonah Williams at Alabama you see a different level of play before they got to Cincinnati.   For that matter, watch some tape on DJ Reader in Houston!

As soon as these fine players come to Cincinnati all the aggression, natural instinct, and athleticism seem to be coached out of them.  Going back even further, watch some tape on Cedric Ogbuehi at Texas A&M or Jake Fisher at Oregon. These guys could seriously play but in Cincinnati they greatly underachieved.

I dunno. I hated the Og pick. Bad hips and feetwork. I was good with Fischer, though, so ... lol. I think Bell and onah are doing ok, though.

Overall, personally, I think a lot of it has been drafting. We've taken some projects that we weren't able to coach up or that just busted (Og). We've shuffled our feet on some players that, I'm guessing, coaches didn't want drafted and didn't put them in positions to win (Lewis and Ross). Or repeatedly taking the same positions in the first three rounds and hoping something works out with areas of need later in the draft (LB). I don't know what the disconnect is, if it's bad scouting or a disconnect between drafting and coaches, but it seems like drafting the right people was our strength early under Marvin and the last 7-8  years has been a huge weakness.