Originally Posted by Direckshun:
This thread is pretty much a rah-rah thread, but here's some actual analysis.
This Bengals team is damn good. Way better than their record.
Burrow is fantastic, of course, and they have a top 3 set of offensive weapons in the NFL. We should assume Jamar Chase magically is healthy enough to play this week, and this is one of those games Spags loses sleep over. To accommodate the rookies in the secondary, his back seven is incredibly basic zone, and really good QBs can carve it up if they don't face a ton of pressure. If we can't get a ton of pressure on Burrow, it's going to be very hard to stop him, even without Chase. Their weapons really are that good. (For the record, the Bengals will get one additional year of not-breaking-the-bank-Burrow, but two years from now this team is going to have to pay Burrow and Chase, and it's going to gut their team.)
After the bye, Spags has done everything in his power to generate the best possible passrush, and it shows. The Chiefs live in teams' backfields right now -- though I do wonder how well that's going to work against Cincy. The Titans have a really great passrush and only planted his ass in the dirt once. Do not believe the advance stats, guys: the Bengals offensive line is very good in pass protection now. They're healthy and they're not allowing a ton of pressure.
Of course, the Chiefs have a cheat code in Chris Jones, but Burrow is nearly Mahomes-esque in pocket navigation. They need multiple passrushers to have a game, and Spags needs to be surgical with his blitz calls: none of these stupid fire blitz calls by the handful that killed the D against Josh Allen.
The Bengals have a run game that is workable, but won't kill them necessarily. Mixon is very good but not healthy. Perine is basically late-career Spencer Ware: good player, but he's not the guy who beats you.
The Bengals defense is underrated, I think. They just shut down Derrick Henry, which is somewhat deceptive. They stacked the box against the Titans, which you can't do against Mahomes. But their two interior DTs are healthy now and they're massive and extremely hard to move.
The Bengals have a good secondary, but it doesn't matter right now with Mahomes and this offense... This is as good an offense as the Chiefs have ever had, and the multitude of weapons the Chiefs boast with what's probably going to be an A-game from Andy Reid with tons of man beaters... I just don't think there's much the secondary will be able to do other than double Kelce and dare Mahomes to beat them with anybody else. Mahomes is extremely sharp this year, and he will beat them with everybody else.
The only hope for the Bengals is to get to Mahomes, and Hendrickson/Hubbard is going to give our tackles a lot of problems. I'm guessing the Chiefs give Wylie as much help as they can manage in this game, and just pray Brown can hold off Hendrickson, which he couldn't in the playoffs. So this will be how the Bengals contains Mahomes, if at all.
The Bengals also have that deadly "rush three with a spy" alignment that they stifled Mahomes with twice last season, including the AFCCG where Mahomes was so locked down, he seemingly forgot how to play football. I suspect the better talent this team has across the board will be the solution to that problem, but it's not one we should dare to forget.
The Bengals are a balanced team, with a metric ton of offensive talent, a good secondary, and tough in the trenches.
The Chiefs are capable of handling all this, but they have to get to Burrow, and they have to keep Mahomes clean.
I do agree with everyone that Mahomes and Reid want to absolutely murder the Bengals, and I bet both of them will be at the top of their game. But there's a reason the Bengals swept us last year in the exact same way: they are very talented and their coaching staff had a great feel for our tendencies.
I have this game as a true tossup, maybe even a very slight lean to the Bengals.
My dude...
The Bengals are a dangerous team, no doubt. And their offensive personnel particularly sets up to do good things against the traditional Spagnuolo approach on D, which features a lot of blitzing and single man coverage.
But some of this stuff...
Saying Hendrickson got the best of Orlando Brown Jr. in the playoffs is generous. Hendrickson did pick up a sack and a half in the second half, but those weren't quick win/individual sacks. He was, for the most part, handled efficiently by Brown (and pancaked more often than he was able to get free for a sack). Picking up 1.5 sacks in the second half because Mahomes started to get gun shy and hold the ball and run around doing crazy things isn't on Brown or a mark in Hendrickson's favor.
And Sam Hubbard? He's a good run defender and a solid LE, but if he played for the Chiefs, you'd be complaining about him and looking to replace him.
Same for their offensive line. If the Chiefs' offensive line had performed like that, you'd be all over it. You're all over it as is, for performing better against a much tougher schedule.
I get wanting to be objective, but you're swinging pretty far in the OTHER direction in an attempt to be objective.
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Originally Posted by Direckshun:
I think he's just having fun with me, but hey.
You obviously get what you want out of it, so whatever. Nobody starts posts with "you're all just a bunch of rah-rah fans" and "looking forward to the meltdown of fellow Chiefs fans" if their main goal is talking football.
Watch duncan sometime post in a playoff thread that's bustling with opponent trolls and our own trolls and hot takes, ignore it all and drop several paragraphs of football insight like he just landed across the table from Brett Kollman.
THAT'S only caring about the football.
Take the passive aggressive drama bullshit out of the analysis and people will treat it far differently, if that's what you actually want out of it.
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