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Wild Card Weekend: Raiders @ Bengals


HoosierCat

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Okay.

Jesus Christ.

Playoff game against an interim head coach, coming from west-to-east, on a semi-short week after a huge emotional night win over a division rival.

There simply isn't going to be a more favorable wild card matchup than that. Gotta take advantage and get this monkey off of our backs.

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Damn, Derek Carr is a smooth talker, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak before.  The interview with Michelle Tafoya was impressive.  Also, it appears this Raiders team is actually better off with this interim guy than they were with Jon Gruden, just seems like they had a lot of drama and controversy with Gruden.  Now they seem stabilized.

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8 hours ago, Stripes said:

Okay.

Jesus Christ.

Playoff game against an interim head coach, coming from west-to-east, on a semi-short week after a huge emotional night win over a division rival.

There simply isn't going to be a more favorable wild card matchup than that. Gotta take advantage and get this monkey off of our backs.

Yeah. You could not script that any better. PLUS, we rested our players so this was a min-bye.

That really could not have worked out any better- Raiders spent emotionally and physically in a game that ended after midnight eastern and they have to travel and play early game on Saturday. Plus we know them, well, from having just played them two months ago. No secrets, no surprises, it's all right there in front of us.

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So, let's see. Raiders at Bengals. Well, Bengals beat them once, so there's that. And we get them at home instead of on the road, and as everyone has noted they're coming off an OT game and will have short week, while our starters were on vacation last Sunday. Yeah, if the Bengals can't win this one they'll never win a playoff game again.

The there's Patriots at Bills. As much as I hate to root for New England I think I'm pulling for them to knock out Buffalo here, but I could be persuaded otherwise. Regardless, I expect the Bills to emerge victorious.

And of course Steelers at Chiefs. Again not gonna lie and I hate myself for it but I'm rooting for Pitt. Not gonna happen though, Chiefs are going to annihilate them.

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9 minutes ago, HoosierCat said:

And of course Steelers at Chiefs. Again not gonna lie and I hate myself for it but I'm rooting for Pitt. Not gonna happen though, Chiefs are going to annihilate them.

It's the right play to root against the Chiefs. Anything that most promotes a Bengals Super Bowl run is the right play. Hopefully we still care either way by the time the game is played.

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Highlights of Bengals @ Raiders week 11

It won't embed here due to NFL policy. Anyway, we might as well look back at the original matchup. It was a very close game until the mid-fourth quarter when the Raiders' wheels fell off. The score doesn't quite tell the story, and I am sure they feel the same way. The Bengals certainly cannot be opening the game with a fumble on the first possession again.

McPherson also might have had the best kicking game in team history in Vegas. As good as he is, that cannot be expected to replicate.

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I think Doc hit most of the bullet points for this game today.

Quote

1.     Vegas has won 4 in a row, but its victims aren’t exactly shining lights: Browns, Broncos, fading Colts last week and the Chargers last night, at home.

2.     Their 10-7 record is the same as Cincinnati’s; their point differential is not. It stands at minus-65. The Bengals are plus-84.

3.      Common opponents: The Raiders beat the Ravens, and the Steelers in Pittsburgh. They lost to the Bears, and twice to KC by 27 and 38 points.

4.     The Bengals have to keep Maxx Crosby and Yannick Ngakoue from ruining their season. They did well v. Crosby (no sacks, one pressure) but not v. Ngakoue (1 sack/fumble lost, 4 pressures, 3 hurries.)

5.     The Raiders play mostly zone, and certainly won’t change that Saturday. That could mean big days for Higgins and Boyd, finding holes in the zone. The Raiders don’t blitz much, either. Burrow has become very good at torching blitzes. That gets us back to being able to control Crosby and Ngakoue.

6.     That might mean a game of patience and no turnovers. The Bengals have showed they’re capable of that, including the W at Las Vegas. Mixon carried 30 times for 123 yards and 2 TDs that day. More notably, he went 19-for-97 in the 2nd half, including a 20-yard TD run as the Bengals were pulling away. There seems no reason to deviate from that plan. 

7.     Burrow, meanwhile, threw for just 148 yards in 20 completions.

8.     Does experience matter? Not as much as it would have against New England. Derek Carr has as many playoff appearances as Joe Burrow, and Carr has made 127 NFL starts. Biasacci is an interim guy, moved up when Gruden was dismissed mid-season.

9.     Taylor talks about the “adversity’’ his team has overcome this fall. Truthfully, there hasn’t been much. Certainly not compared with the Raiders.  

10. Oh, and it would be helpful if the Bengals could cover a tight end. Darren Waller caught 7 balls for 116 yards last time.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/blogs/daugherty-blog/2022/01/10/afc-playoffs-cincinnati-bengals-look-win-vs-las-vegas-raiders/9157942002/

 

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2 hours ago, TJJackson said:

Zimmer got fired

would love to have him back in place of Anarumo

Nope.  I wouldn't want to mess with the chemistry on this team/coaching staff.  Hiring Zimmer wouldn't be messing with the chemistry, it would be like throwing a hand grenade into the lab.  Dude is as old school as they come, and that's now where this team, or this league, is headed right now.  

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