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AFC Championship Weekend: Bengals @ Chiefs


HoosierCat

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2 things:

1. Anyone in the know with the KC media; did this event today qualify as another “false loss,?” And how many false losses are you allowed?

2.  Does anyone know if that d-lineman we signed who played for the Raiders two weeks ago got into the game today?

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1 minute ago, COB said:

2 things:

1. Anyone in the know with the KC media; did this event today qualify as another “false loss,?” And how many false losses are you allowed?

2.  Does anyone know if that d-lineman we signed who played for the Raiders two weeks ago got into the game today?

Pretty certain I saw him in there.  I know Kerr was in on two different plays where he could have gotten a tackle or an assist.  

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9 hours ago, COB said:

2 things:

1. Anyone in the know with the KC media; did this event today qualify as another “false loss,?” And how many false losses are you allowed?

2.  Does anyone know if that d-lineman we signed who played for the Raiders two weeks ago got into the game today?

He did. 20% snapshare I think. 

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Well, it is sort of just fine in the end that the NFL brilliant powers chose Mahomes for the Pro Bowl (with Herbert and Jackson), leaving Burrow off the roster. Now Mahomes can go play in that "game", and, well, our #9 isn't available anyway. So there's that. :glasses:

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I was really frustrated when they went down 21-3.
I needed to change things up so I went downstairs, turned on the game, and started cleaning my son's room to keep me preoccupied.
Then the rest of the game happened.  I was scared to come out of my son's room and jinx the whole thing and be in the room with the TV.
I swear to God turned the mounted TV to face my son's room and watched the remainder of the game from there.
My son had to be happy because his room has NEVER been as clean as it is right now.  Don't thank me, thank the Bengals.

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What else needs to be said about the defense in the 2nd half that hasn't already been commented about.  Just great adjustment and execution !!

Burrow, yet again being totally unfazed by the enormity of this game and kept hunting.  Even his rushing was huge, picking up multiple first downs.

Bates with the pass breakup, leading to the Bell INT.  Great play by Bates and way to follow the play and be there Bell !!

In the game winning drive, how monstrous were both Higgins and Mixon ??  Not making the play was unacceptable.

Felt really bad for CJ and his knee.  Help up quick dude !!

Was so sick of hearing:
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15 minutes ago, ArmyBengal said:

I was really frustrated when they went down 21-3.
I needed to change things up so I went downstairs, turned on the game, and started cleaning my son's room to keep me preoccupied.
Then the rest of the game happened.  I was scared to come out of my son's room and jinx the whole thing and be in the room with the TV.
I swear to God turned the mounted TV to face my son's room and watched the remainder of the game from there.
My son had to be happy because his room has NEVER been as clean as it is right now.  Don't thank me, thank the Bengals.

lol that's great! I just hid down on the lower level of the house, either sitting in the chair rocking back and forth or pacing in circles around it for most of the game. Here we are at lunchtime the next day and I'm still a little shaky.

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OK, so the first half of this paywalled Barnwell piece on espn+ is annoying with its "Chiefs gave away the game" framing, but the second half on the defensive adjustments is excellent.

Quote

 

The other shocking element of all of this is just how dominant the Bengals were after halftime. With their season on the line, the league's 19th-ranked defense by DVOA suffocated the Chiefs. As The Athletic's Sheil Kapadia noted Sunday night, the Chiefs were reduced to the worst single half of football on offense that we've seen in any game of the Mahomes era by expected points added. After posting a 98.0 QBR in the first half, Mahomes posted a QBR of 1.4 in the second half and overtime, per ESPN's Seth Walder.

Somehow, after being shredded during the first half, the Bengals morphed into the '85 Bears after halftime. How? Using the data from NFL Next Gen Stats and from charting every snap, I did my best to try to piece together how they solved the Chiefs in time to save their season and advance to the Super Bowl.

In the first half, the Bengals mostly tried to do the same things the league has done against Mahomes and the Chiefs this season, and they enjoyed virtually no success with their attempts. When they ran two-high coverages in the first two quarters, Mahomes was 11-of-12 for 141 yards and a touchdown. The Chiefs were able to slice up those coverages by throwing digs and crossers in front of the safeties and then using motion to create opportunities.

Mahomes also hit two big plays against single-high coverages in the first half; one on a deep crosser to Hill, and another on a play in which late motion by Hill took a safety out of the middle of the field and created a one-on-one opportunity for a 44-yard bomb to Hardman. The Chiefs posted an 82.4% pass block win rate during the half and mostly dominated up front. The only blemish on their record was the failure on the final play.

How did the Bengals turn things around? A few factors combined to contribute to a stunning defensive improvement:

They played more single-high coverages and lived to tell the tale. Yes, after an entire season in which the league supposedly learned that the secret to stopping the Chiefs was playing two-high, the Bengals were able to get themselves by playing more single-high coverages. They played a lot of Cover 1 Robber during the second half, a shell in which there's one safety playing deep in the middle of the field. The other safety drops down closer to the line of scrimmage and helps coverage from the middle, where he can either get into throwing lanes or provide inside leverage for defenders dealing with crossing routes.

By my count, the Chiefs ran 12 plays against single-high safety looks in the second half and overtime. Those 17 plays netted a total of 41 yards. To be fair, things weren't exactly going great when the Bengals stuck in two-high defenses; the 17 plays the Chiefs ran versus two-high looks netted a grand total of ... 42 yards. Playing single-high coverages against the Chiefs without giving up the sort of big plays the two-high looks were supposed to take away was a huge advantage.

The shift toward a more even coverage split helped take away what had been a fruitful avenue of attack for Mahomes and the Chiefs: throws to the outside. In the first half, when Mahomes threw outside the numbers, he went 8-of-8 for 97 yards with three touchdowns. After the break, on those same throws, he went 0-for-6 with an interception. The Bengals gave away too many easy completions to the outside in the first half, but after halftime, the Chiefs simply weren't able to make them pay for moving that second safety underneath.

Lou Anarumo got creative rushing three. Cincinnati's defensive coordinator basically threw his blitz packages out of the playbook for this game. Outside of one five-man pressure inside the 5-yard line, the Bengals didn't blitz once. We saw a couple of sim pressures, like the one on the Hill pick, but they abandoned any idea of sending big blitzes at Mahomes in the hopes of creating pressure.

Instead, Anarumo sent less pressure than virtually any team has sent at Mahomes in a game so far. Mahomes saw a total of 45 three-man rushes this season, or an average of about 2.4 three-man rushes per contest. The Bengals sent three-man rushes after Mahomes 15 times on Sunday, 10 of which came after halftime. Despite the idea that Mahomes would just pick those coverages apart and eventually find an open receiver, I found that those 15 plays produced only 38 net yards. According to Next Gen Stats, Mahomes was 7-of-13 for 58 yards with a pick and two sacks when the Bengals dropped eight into coverage.

In most cases, the Bengals were rushing three and then using the fourth rusher as a spy to try to limit Mahomes' ability as a scrambler. One week after he ran seven times for 69 yards and a touchdown, he scrambled only three times for 19 yards and one first down on Sunday. This most often fell on Logan Wilson, who would begin to rush and muddle up a blocker before rolling to the middle of the field, which gave the Bengals the benefit of both having a spy on Mahomes and occupying a blocker long enough for their defensive ends to get one-on-ones against Kansas City's tackles.

What we also saw, though, was the Bengals putting both Hubbard and Hendrickson into coverage. Often, they would either chip or just begin to cover Kelce at the beginning of the star tight end's route before dropping into coverage as either a flat or hook defender. It's easy to wonder why a team would "waste" one of their best edge rushers by dropping them into coverage, but this was an effective tactic in terms of taking away Kansas City's easy completions on drag routes and in the quick game.

This tactic might have swung the game for the Bengals. As you saw from the third-and-goal clip earlier, Hubbard getting in Mahomes' throwing lane might have taken away would-be game-winning throws to Kelce and Pringle before Hubbard strip-sacked the Chiefs quarterback. Hendrickson dropping into Mahomes' throwing lane created a moment of uncertainty on the Hill pick and forced him to sail an easy completion on the opening play of overtime. It felt like Mahomes was unsure of what he was seeing at times during the second half.

Dropping eight into coverage also gave the Bengals the ability to double both Hill and Kelce while forcing Mahomes to find another receiver. On third-and-3, for example, they rushed three and managed to bracket both of Kansas City's star defenders long enough for the three-man rush to get home and sack Mahomes. Most teams wouldn't be brave enough to run a 3-1-7 alignment out on third-and-3, but the Bengals were confident that the Chiefs weren't going to be either able or interested in running the ball:

For what it's worth, while the natural criticism for any Reid loss is that his team didn't run the ball enough, I'm not sure that's the case here. During the second half, the Chiefs faced a first down versus a look with two high safeties 11 times. They ran the ball on six of those 11 plays and Mahomes scrambled on a seventh. They actually netted 43 yards on those 11 plays, which is impressive given that their other 23 plays netted only 40.

The Bengals got more pass pressure. Even while rushing three, they had more success getting after Mahomes in the second half. At the same time, Cincinnati's offense did a much better job of protecting Burrow after halftime. The pressure rates generated by each team show that a lopsided first half turned into a much closer battle in the second:

Pressure rate in the first half: Bengals 13.6%; Chiefs 47.4%

Pressure rate in the second half and overtime: Bengals 25%; Chiefs 26.1%

Mahomes posted a 4.6 QBR when under pressure against the Bengals, going 2-of-4 for 18 yards with four sacks and a fumble. A couple of those pressures were on the line, but most were on Mahomes as he scrambled and maneuvered to find open receivers. His ability to make magic happen on the fly is part of what makes him incredible, but it can also lead to ugly halves like the one we saw Sunday.

The Bengals started getting more aggressive with their coverage. This one is more anecdotal, but I saw multiple examples of it during the game, and I feel confident that it would be borne out if we could ask the Bengals under oath. It became clear as this game went on that the referees had no intention of calling anything but the most obvious penalties, and after halftime, the Bengals got more aggressive in terms of challenging Kansas City's receivers. (For one example, look at Kelce getting grabbed and spun around on second-and-6 with 1:50 to go.) I don't want to say they were getting away with penalties, but I suspect that they would have been flagged more often if this had been, say, Shawn Hochuli's crew instead of Bill Vinovich's.

If this sounds like I'm accusing the Bengals of something untoward, that's not the case. Defensive backs should do everything they can get away with in coverage, especially in a league in which offensive players are granted so many advantages by the rules. The Chiefs were snatching and grabbing even more aggressively than the Bengals were; Sneed notably grabbed Chase's jersey from behind to help slow down the wideout on that interception in the fourth quarter. There are the rules on paper and the rules that are being administered by the referees in an actual game. The Bengals were smart to play to the limits of the game the referees were calling, although they were lucky by any measure to get away with a late hit on Hardman.

There were other small factors in the second half. The Chiefs dealt with communication issues on offense, which cost them on a couple of third downs. Mahomes seemed to fall in love with lofting and lobbing passes to the sideline, and it seemed like he was almost too fine in terms of threading his throws at times. There were some drops and some poorly thrown passes.

More than anything, though, the Bengals adapted and survived. With their playoff lives at risk, Hendrickson & Co. simply out-executed the Chiefs to help fuel a legendary comeback. Virtually no one expected the Bengals to be in the postseason before this season. Few expected them to beat the top-seeded Titans, and even fewer thought they had a shot against the Chiefs. By the time they went down 21-3 on Sunday, I suspect that there were even Bengals fans who were resigning themselves to their fate. The Bengals have repeatedly proved that it's foolish to count them out. After a stunning second half, nobody is taking them lightly anymore.

 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/insider/insider/story/_/id/33183716/chiefs-collapse-bengals-going-super-bowl-18-point-lead-patrick-mahomes-meltdown-cincinnati-unbelievable-second-half

 

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You see what happens when you're really good?

Your sense of rivalry moves up a level. At the moment I couldn't give a single shit about the Ravens, Steelers, or their fans. They're puny and old news. New animosity is growing with Titans and Chiefs fans, because the level of competition is higher now. The AFC North division is small time when you have your sights set on Super Bowl contention.

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If you do podcasts, grab the Mays/Tice one (I will link) and jump to the 32 minute mark for the game discussion. A few minutes after that Tice does a DEEP dive on what the Bengals did defensively in the second half. It was not as simple "dropping 8 in coverage" but how they disguised those 8 and also the communication among the LBers and DBs. It's fascinating...

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bengals-rams-move-on-to-super-bowl-lvi-can-the-49ers/id1528622068?i=1000549487607

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5 minutes ago, ArmyBengal said:

My buddy (not a Bengals fan) simply texted me, “How about that game yesterday”? That alone got my heart racing again.

Jesus if winning a Super Bowl takes me out of this world, just know it’s worth it. Take care of my wife and kids !!

My phone was exploding last night. I had friends from all over the place texting me about the game. Some friends of ours in Canada decided to start following the NFL this year and became Bengals fans because we are. They've been so excited with the team.

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