AMPHAR

It felt like there were a million 3rd and less than 3 for Baltimore in this game. Baltimore is a tough offense to stop and that's been consistent when Lamar plays. They are consistently top 10 in his era. I feel the first half defense effort was about the best you could expect from that unit. In the 2nd half, unfortunately you had to play perfect football on offense. A bad TO and a bad hold doom you to 1-4. Not fair for what is now a top 10 yardage offense and top 5 scoring offense. They have two bad offenses coming up and if they can't slow them down to get wins. Then its time to fire some staff mid-season.

Great googly moogly Chad.

Is Chad Ochocinco fighting Harrison or are they fighting different people? I hope its the latter.

There's no savior coming off the bench or off IR. The D has always been bend don't break under Lou. That's all you can hope for in a return of the D. To be truthful that's exactly what they were in 3 of the 4 weeks. Its the Washington game that has everyone freaked out. They are going to bleed yards in a bunch of games including this week. You got to hold on to that INT when it comes your way or make Lamar unreliable when he throws it. You got to make them snap the ball 10/12 times to score and eliminate your best CB getting beat in seconds (no D-line is going help when that BS is going on). You have to put scoring pressure on the other team, period. If Baltimore feels like it can just pound into the line of scrimmage and worse case punt, win the game in low/mid 20s. They'll lose. Baltimore has to feel like they must throw and score 30+ in order to win. They aren't going to be what they never were under Lou with anyone drafted/coached under him. Its a bend but don't break mentality.

Certainly better injury update.

Punters are players too or played soccer goalie. Either way punters are players too!

How lucky are we? The solution to fix this entire defense that's always given up yards is just sitting on the bench! Kinda odd how that happens. Battle ends up on a PFF list one time and he's the savior and the player playing in front of him just happens to be the most critical failure point. Awesome. Make the switch today! I hope he's that good. Much like just switching O-line coaches from Turner to Pollack wasn't going to instantly solve the fact they had 1 starting caliber linemen that in time proved to be average as average in Jonah Williams. How long has it taken to get a singular game with no sacks? The defense is soft. They constantly take bad angles probably because they don't lust for that first contact and would rather strip at the ball. Chunk plays happening again. Probably time for a coordinator switch and time to move on from some players in the offseason IF it can't at least rebound and get up into the top half of the league. They don't have a Burfict roaming waiting to cheap shot somebody. Willing to give up his mental health, wealth and career just to prove a point he can light you up anytime he wants. They have a bunch of coverage guys and potential ball hawks, I guess. Hopefully Battle is that good. Make the off season a whole lot easier IF we have David Fulcher on the bench and don't know it.

Good luck to Robbins but Simmons don't mess around. Maybe Robbins can make rebound similar to Elliot? Simmons is not afraid to push out a kicker even a drafted one. Travis Dorcsh, Elliot, and Robbins. Hopefully new guy can stick for 10 years.

Bates was great at doing stuff that never ended up in stat sheet. Zac alluded to that as well with Vonn Bell. But chunk passing plays are a problem again, SO what's the deal Lou? You got your vet safeties to make the magic work. This defense was all praise in training camp and preseason. Time to put up or shut up for Lou, IMO.

Supposedly Trey was in a sling following the game. It could be precautionary but I think he'll be out this week.

Given the defenses struggles. I'd to see them a little more aggressive on kick off coverage. I don't like just handing them the 30 with the way this defense bleeds yards. D-line issues are real, but it still doesn't explain pass catchers coming open so quickly, and the poor yards after contact, AND once again horrible angles to the ball.

Bengals win by a slim margin. Bengals have played 3 close games that could have gone either way. Unfortunately they all went in the L column. Solid road victory in Carolina. They may need to out score the Ravens because they looked great on Sunday Night. But its the same hard to follow rules. Don't rush pass Lamar, try to keep lane integrity and keep him in the pocket. Tackling is very worrisome.

I thought it was solid win. 10 point win on the road. Panthers got a positive switch at QB and coming home off a big road win was an overlooked task. 1. Defense - horrible. bad tacklers. Not sure how it gets better. Hopefully they force more TOs because they bleed yards. 2. Offense - O-line getting it done. Joe Burrow is excellent in patience and the underneath targets are getting YAC and converting firsts. Bengals probably played a B game, left points on the board.

I'm not sure how a vocal leader will prevent KC getting lucky with a fortunate call or your defense almost giving up a TD on every drive. Team just needs to knock a few wins down.

The JTO QB school for Dalton from the past week is a good watch. Dalton had a good/great day. However, JTO keeps repeating "He had a great day, but this is some luck". Dalton got a way with some iffy reads/throws. There a couple missed should be INTs. Dalton took advantage of some extraordinary bad secondary play from the Raiders. However, I would guess the Bengals secondary could play equally as bad. The Panthers protection was very good vs. Raiders. So? Does the secondary/defense bounce back or do they allow the Red Rifle to ride again! You allow Dalton to get the ball out quick and then don't tackle behind it. It will be a long day again for the Bengal defenders.

I hope Mims does very good. I was hoping not to get to the Mims era until later. Alt - top pick out of the class. They started polishing his nuts a little too early. TJ Watt took him to school. Was getting high praise prior. I think he's out for a while with an injury. Latham - up and down; gives up pressures, sacks Fashanu - Probably the best right now. Although Alt was doing great until TJ Watt. Fautanu - not doing well pass pro Guyton - struggling Suamataia - Hendrickson got him benched. Wasn't good week 1 either.

I would prefer crazy legs Andy to get out of the pocket. He was a horrible play extender. When his first read isn't there consistently he would constantly event pressure, break pocket and run himself into a situation with no solution. I'd say don't mess with the offense at all. Let them try to score as fast and as often as they can. If the D can't stop Andy Dalton in a shoot out so be it.

The league runs 70%+ zone defense. This is directly related to the league emphasis on Illegal Contact being called years ago and it carrying an automatic first down. However, there is an increasing amount of Zone/Man coverage. While the Bengals D just got carved up the overall trend in the NFL has been less yards and points from the point of when the league focused on illegal contact. These coverage are so complex, I seriously doubt a data analysis service (like PFF) can truly give an accurate % of zone vs. man. But according to them the league play 70% zone and its probably not going to revert back to the old days considering offenses have been slowed since the 2011 (?) rule emphasis. So? You fire a D Coord, fine. Good chance the replacement plays zone the overwhelming majority of the time.

Defense disaster performance against Washington. Had a good day vs. KC. Probably the biggest mystery of the season. I think the offense has put in two winning performances together despite facing exclusively deep coverage. If you want to be hopeful, get back to 5-5 and then take a look at the playoff picture. The offense is finding stuff underneath and getting YAC enough to produce scoring opportunities. There are some red zone concerns. Defense is going to give up yards, they'll have to revert back to the early days of Marvin and produce an insane amount of TOs, forcing punts doesn't seem to be their thing.

I believe it is a patch that every rookie will get when they are active for their first game. NFL PREM1ERE patch. I believe they will then be given the jersey as a keepsake or most likely to sell.

Bengals should roll up 400+ this week. The concern is what happened vs. Washington. No one, INCLUDING the lockeroom saw that domination coming from JD and Washington. So what unthinkable thing could happen this week to push them to 0-4?

I wish I could play NFL QB.

Do not let Andy Dalton have his first read. If he can fire quickly he is capable of putting up a big day. If you force him into progressions he'll struggle. So maybe shelve the soft zone coverage for a week? I dunno really what a depressing start to the season. Hopefully they can roll up some yards and points at least, but it just seems like this week will be a baffling offensive performance. Pass rush win rate was low vs. Commandos. So that points to talent. However, they only blitzed 11 times so that points to bad decisions. It seemed to me they played two deep quite a bit and zone a whole bunch. Are the safeties not communicating, again? What's the excuse the chunk plays this year?

Trent Brown out for season. Daniels was impressive no doubt. This defensive performance was dead on last year's Houston Texans CJ Stroud performance. Just depressing. Also, Lou has gotten beat by a OT catching a TD two weeks in a row. Has to be some sort of new low.

Mims gave up a sack, looked bad on that play. False start on a PAT. But I thought he was impressive in the later stages of the game especially when they knew Burrow would be dropping back and holding the ball looking deep. I don't think he gave up much pressure in later part of the game.