Originally Posted by smithandrew051:
Sacks don’t tell the entire story, but they do mean something when you have a large or small amount.
Hubbard and Hendrickson are fine, but not on the Bosa/Mack level.
Hendrickson used to be pretty consistent, which he still is but it isn’t resulting in his typical 1-2 sacks per game. He would rarely have a huge game, but was normally always good for a sack in a key moment. This year, he has 4.5 sacks against Flacco and Pickett. 1.5 against the rest of the league. 8 of his 19 QB hits came in those two games.
Hubbard hasn’t been overly dominant either.
If the Chiefs aren’t ready for the Bengals to sit back in coverage, I’ll be very surprised. Honestly, that first drive of the second half in the most recent Charger game should tell you that this year is different. Reid and Mahomes will be much more content to take what’s there, and we have better pieces to do so.
the bengals should have a top 5 defense with the teams they've played [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mecca:
Zac Taylor is also a terrible head coach.
He's putting his offense in a position to fail more often than not. A lot of the pressure problems are because he refuses to tailor the offense. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Hammock Parties:
the bengals should have a top 5 defense with the teams they've played
Absolutely. I always felt that our defensive turnaround last year was as much about the QBs that we played as anything.
Once we played bad QBs, our defense started getting better. Funny how that works. Some of it had to do with Ingram and moving Jones back in, but the rest was due to opponent. [Reply]
Originally Posted by tredadda:
Do they though? KC was comfortably ahead in both games last year in the first half. They scored a combined six points in the second half of those games. KC did more to lose those games than Cincy beating them.
Yes they did. The Bengals made adjustments in both games and slowed us down. One time is a fluke, two times isn't an accident. They played that soft zone defense while shadowing Tyreek and Kelce and we couldn't crack it. And on offense their WR group is elite and were able to take advantage of our DBs.
The changes we made in the offseason to create a more balanced passing offense and rebuild the entire secondary were literally because of these two games against the Bengals. Do they matchup as well with us now as they did last year? We're about to find out. [Reply]
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.
"Here's some actual analysis" ......as if you're fucking opinion is analysis and everyone else's is just rah rah bullshit. My God you are an arrogant prick. [Reply]
Originally Posted by raybec 4:
"Here's some actual analysis" ......as if you're fucking opinion is analysis and everyone else's is just rah rah bullshit. My God you are an arrogant prick.
Not to mention that he's often just flat wrong. :-) [Reply]
Originally Posted by louie aguiar:
This will be a test for sure. Ward had good coverage a few times last year but could never do enough to break up passes. I do remember chase getting away with pushes in the back to give him more room to make the catches though.
