Week 1: Bengals @ Browns Game Thread

[GapControl]

3 hours ago, COB said:

They were noT ready to play Schwartz’ defense.  That’s on our coaches. Mom

Myles will be thinking about the Bengals when he shines his HOF bust 

 

hahaha …. Jonah Williams…. He went first round! 

[AMPHAR]

Highest paid QB.  Soon to be among the top paid WR (Higgins, Chase).  Pro Bowl LT, Tom Brady's Center and RG, First Round RT.    Can't score a TD? 

Failure of those players and the off season program and game prep week.   

Unfortunately it looks like we are spending Weeks 2-6 once again over analyzing the offense and wondering if it will ever kick into high gear.    

 

 

[HoosierCat]

Well, we will see if the offense getting publicly pantsed over and over and over again Sunday fires anyone up. 

The most alarming thing to me was Burrow's performance. I know everyone has bad days but he was flat-out awful yesterday. Being rusty from a lack of practice and preseason snaps is one thing, looking like you're playing football for the first time in your life, and failing badly, is another.

That said it wasn't all him. According to all the press clippings, we have one of the best receiving units in the league. If so, you wouldn't know it from yesterday, when they couldn't get open to save their lives. As usual, the line was inconsistent and when Mixon had a few good runs, Taylor went into Classic Marvin Mode: The run game is working? Well, let's start throwing the ball, they'll never expect that!

Beyond the offense, we got "special" (in the short bus sense) teams. JFC what a crapfest. I will actually give McMoney a pass on the missed FG, it was a long shot in crappy weather. But punting? Meet the New Punter, Sucks Like the Old Punter. And the return guys? Quit catching the ball inside the five!!!! Let it go into the end zone. Dumb mental mistakes. Where the hell is Simmons? 

At least the defense showed up. But what should have been a dominant performance was utterly, totally, completely wasted by the rest of the squad and coaches. And they finally ran out of gas.

All right. I'm done bitching. Just fix it. You got a week.

[volcom69]

47 minutes ago, HoosierCat said:

Well, we will see if the offense getting publicly pantsed over and over and over again Sunday fires anyone up. 

The most alarming thing to me was Burrow's performance. I know everyone has bad days but he was flat-out awful yesterday. Being rusty from a lack of practice and preseason snaps is one thing, looking like you're playing football for the first time in your life, and failing badly, is another.

That said it wasn't all him. According to all the press clippings, we have one of the best receiving units in the league. If so, you wouldn't know it from yesterday, when they couldn't get open to save their lives. As usual, the line was inconsistent and when Mixon had a few good runs, Taylor went into Classic Marvin Mode: The run game is working? Well, let's start throwing the ball, they'll never expect that!

Beyond the offense, we got "special" (in the short bus sense) teams. JFC what a crapfest. I will actually give McMoney a pass on the missed FG, it was a long shot in crappy weather. But punting? Meet the New Punter, Sucks Like the Old Punter. And the return guys? Quit catching the ball inside the five!!!! Let it go into the end zone. Dumb mental mistakes. Where the hell is Simmons? 

At least the defense showed up. But what should have been a dominant performance was utterly, totally, completely wasted by the rest of the squad and coaches. And they finally ran out of gas.

All right. I'm done bitching. Just fix it. You got a week.

Yea the running game is what bothers me, when Burrow is off or rusty why not feed the run game, and when it works keep using it. Year after year it’s like this and it makes no sense. 

[TJJackson]

These weak starts to each of the last few seasons has to stop

some argue, hey, you made it the playoffs regardless

Yes, but the lower seeds due to losing early winnable games has been costly

[HoosierCat]

14 minutes ago, volcom69 said:

Yea the running game is what bothers me, when Burrow is off or rusty why not feed the run game, and when it works keep using it. Year after year it’s like this and it makes no sense. 

"It's a passing league" has really become the mindset. RB has been devalued both financially and as part of the game. Marvin at least used to make mouth noises about pounding the rock, even though he only followed through once (2009) when he had no other choice. Nowadays coaches don't even bother with the lip service any more. 

[AMPHAR]

Bengals don't hit enough int TC along the line to lean on a running game early in the year.  They also have no desire to do so either.   

Quite frankly, pointing out no running game when the QB is getting $55m a year, I think they ran it plenty of times yesterday and effectively enough to have Joe carve out something.  Protection wasn't a shit show (not great or good either) but we've seen Joe make plays with worse performances.

They put the game in his hands and he failed.  Simple as that.   That defense was playing good enough that if you show some sort of offense ability its taking a few carries away from Chubb and put it into Watson who was also horrible.   Then maybe you escape with an ugly close loss or ugly close win.

Joe isn't super human and needs reps.   He tried to throw them out of the game week 1 last year.  This time on the road in shitty weather made a comeback hard to do.  

Its just going to be annoying not hitting at top performance early in the year and hopefully it doesn't cost them in the playoff run.

 

 

 

[membengal]

That was every bit as bad as I feared.

 

My only Burrow worry is that the calf is really still an issue and he does not have the abilty to move around in the pocket like he usually does or take off and run. If he can't do those things, he's a shell of what he usually is. 

[ArmyBengal]

Nope Watson was not good for the Browns yesterday and he didn't need to be.
They just ran the ball for 200+ yards on a defense that gave up an average of 100 all of last season.
That simply can't happen on a rainy day when you know your QB is probably going to struggle.

Burrow struggled.  That might be an understatement.  He looked completely out of sync with all of it.
While I expected some of that to a degree, not to the level of what we saw.  Really disappointed in that.

When going back and watching how little urgency the entire team seemed to have, it's almost as if they approached it with the thought of a preseason game.  They were just out there to run plays and get everyone comfortable with getting hit and mixing it up again since the AFC Championship game.  Zero urgency or concern with having zero urgency.  

They better hope the injuries really take their toll on Baltimore, because that's a loss waiting to happen.
The season isn't over by any stretch, but getting out to a fast start and not having to worry about seeding in the last few weeks is again going to be a concern.

[GapControl]

Besides 2009 , when was the last time a Bengals offense could lean on the running game to get through games like Sunday ?  Maybe some in the Ced Benson days but otherwise I am drawing a blank.  
 

Does Mixon’s rookie year count ? 

[HoosierCat]

21 minutes ago, GapControl said:

Besides 2009 , when was the last time a Bengals offense could lean on the running game to get through games like Sunday ?  Maybe some in the Ced Benson days but otherwise I am drawing a blank.  
 

Does Mixon’s rookie year count ? 

They had a top-5 run game in 2014 with Hill and Gio. Hill was a rookie and ran for a career-high 1,124 yards while Gio, in his second year, added 680. When they went to Cleveland that December, Andy played like Burrow did yesterday: 14/24, 117, 0 TD, 1 INT, 53.6 rating.  The D also got two turnovers that day. The difference between then and now? Hill, Gio and Rex Burkhead laid a combined 241 rushing yards on the Clowns and the Bengals walked out with a 30-0 victory. 

[AMPHAR]

31 minutes ago, GapControl said:

Besides 2009 , when was the last time a Bengals offense could lean on the running game to get through games like Sunday ?  Maybe some in the Ced Benson days but otherwise I am drawing a blank.  
 

Does Mixon’s rookie year count ? 

2014.  Bengals extended Dalton after a horrible playoff melt down in 2013.  Mistake.  Bunch of skill position injuries throughout the year.  Dalton bad year.   They got blown out on Thursday Night vs. Cleveland.   Then leaned on the run game the rest of the way and earned a wild card birth.  Along the way ending Johnny Football's career.

2018 would count.  Mixon's best year or 2nd best year but a lost year overall.    

Although not running per say.  Last year they turned the offense struggles around by throwing underneath to Mixon, Perine, and Hurst.   

[AMPHAR]

21 minutes ago, HoosierCat said:

They had a top-5 run game in 2014 with Hill and Gio. Hill was a rookie and ran for a career-high 1,124 yards while Gio, in his second year, added 680. When they went to Cleveland that December, Andy played like Burrow did yesterday: 14/24, 117, 0 TD, 1 INT, 53.6 rating.  The D also got two turnovers that day. The difference between then and now? Hill, Gio and Rex Burkhead laid a combined 241 rushing yards on the Clowns and the Bengals walked out with a 30-0 victory. 

That was my favorite "Battle of Ohio" the day Johnny Football died.  Prior to that game he was supposed to come in and lead them to a playoff spot. 

Hill, Hewitt, and Gresh were just nasty on the edge that year.

[HoosierCat]

Some good stuff from Barnwell over on E$PN+

Quote

We don't yet have the All-22 film for this game, but I was able to use the player-tracking data from NFL Next Gen Stats to get a sense of how the Browns outfoxed Burrow and Cincy on third downs.

Debuting Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz made two clear choices on defense, and they were both interesting. I'll start on the coverage side. The Browns almost always showed one coverage look before the snap before spinning a safety and presenting something different to Burrow after the snap. Most often, they started with two high safeties and then rolled into a single-high coverage afterward. They played a lot of Cover 1 man and Cover 1 robber, where a safety patrols the deep middle of the field, a safety or linebacker tries to take away crossing routes underneath and everyone else plays man coverage across the field.

Schwartz tried to limit Burrow to throws into the flat and up the sideline, even if it meant placing his cornerbacks and safeties on an island in coverage. It worked. Burrow threw a career-high 71% of his passes outside the numbers, going 8-of-22 for only 44 yards on those throws. He typically averages 7.5 yards per attempt on those throws, so the Browns couldn't have dreamt he would fail to top 2.0 yards per throw on those passes.

As the game wore on, the Browns showed a wider variety of coverage looks. Throughout the day, though, they tried to slow Burrow's post-snap processing and force him to throw low-percentage, high-upside passes. Cleveland lived dangerously, but amid the bad weather, the tactic was wildly successful.

Up front, Schwartz moved star edge rusher Myles Garrett around the defensive line. Switching him from one side to the other isn't anything new, and we saw some designed overloads to deliver Garrett one-on-one opportunities against a tackle, but one alignment that was particularly interesting popped up a couple of times. On the second third down of the game, the Browns stood up Garrett directly in front of center Ted Karras as part of a five-man front, making the Bengals block each lineman one-on-one. Garrett badly beat Karras at the snap, forcing an immediate scramble from Burrow and creating a sack for Ogbo Okoronkwo.

Lining up Garrett over the interior makes sense. Burrow has developed into an excellent quarterback in terms of getting the ball out quickly, and putting Garrett over the center creates the quickest path to the passer. The strength of the Bengals' offensive line is considered to be tackles Orlando Brown Jr. and Jonah Williams, leaving Garrett to attack weaker pass protectors on the interior.

The Browns pulled the tactic out only a couple of times, but it had a chilling effect on Cincinnati's playcalling. Burrow averaged a league-high 7.6 dropbacks per game out of empty sets last season, when his 70.4 QBR was the 10th-best mark in football. On Sunday, the Bengals went empty twice, and he was 1-of-2 for 3 yards. The possibility of the Browns going back to that rush package and threatening the interior with Garrett likely discouraged them from going empty more often.

Does this feel like a blueprint other teams will emulate against the Bengals in the weeks to come? I'm not so sure. Disguising coverages and trying to make Burrow work harder after the snap isn't a bad idea, but it's also nothing new. A defensive coordinator lining up his best pass-rusher directly over the center is a fun tactic, but few teams have the sort of disruptor the Browns have with Garrett. (The Cardinals aren't going to be able to emulate this tactic in a few weeks when they play the Bengals, but the Rams and Titans might with Aaron Donald and Jeffery Simmons, respectively.)

With better weather and more pass attempts, it's tough for me to believe other defenses will shut down Burrow on those deep passes and prevent his receivers from winning on contested catches up the sideline. He averaged a league-high 9.5 yards per attempt against Cover 1 man over the prior two seasons, nearly a full yard ahead of anybody else in the league. The tactic worked because the Browns have good cornerbacks, enjoyed the benefits of sloppy weather and got pressure up front. Even two or three completions on those throws would dramatically shift a game in favor of Cincinnati.

 

[COB]

Schwartz is good, the league knows that.  We got out coached on that side of the ball.  Should have run it more.  

[AMPHAR]

Lou gave props to Cam Taylor Britt and Zac Carter as playing really well on Bengals line tonight.   Don't remember exactly how he described Zac's play but it was something playing like a "grown man".

 

[AMPHAR]

Not Browns game related:  Anyone notice the Cincinnati skyline featured in the Sunday Night Football intro?

[ArmyBengal]

I didn’t watch the Sunday night game…

Here’s something “I think I saw” in the game, but will readily admit that it may not be what it appeared to be.

Instead of saying this is what it is, I’ll simply ask you all…

While watching the defense play, I could have sworn that at least 4-5 times throughout the game it appeared Dax Hill was avoiding contact. Like he saw where to go, but instead of going to the contact, veered off let it play out.

Just curious if anyone else had that perspective or not…

[HoosierCat]

9 hours ago, ArmyBengal said:

I didn’t watch the Sunday night game…

Here’s something “I think I saw” in the game, but will readily admit that it may not be what it appeared to be.

Instead of saying this is what it is, I’ll simply ask you all…

While watching the defense play, I could have sworn that at least 4-5 times throughout the game it appeared Dax Hill was avoiding contact. Like he saw where to go, but instead of going to the contact, veered off let it play out.

Just curious if anyone else had that perspective or not…

I was listening to the radio broadcast so I can’t say, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dbs start erring on the side of caution because of the stricter helmet rule. Basically now if your helmet touches a guy you are screwed, intentional or not. From espn:

Established in 2018 to reduce the type of contact that frequently causes concussions, this rule has proved nearly impossible to officiate. As a result, the league has relied largely on warning letters and fines issued after the game to enforce the rule, which originally prohibited a player from lowering his helmet to initiate contact with an opponent. And in the rare instances where it is penalized in a game, the NFL has instructed officials to refer to the infraction generically as "unnecessary roughness."

Over the ensuing five years, the league has issued an average of 191.4 warning letters and fines per season. In a sign of the difficulty in changing this particular behavior, it set a record of 229 in 2022. But even postgame discipline has proved problematic, as players have successfully appealed roughly one-third of the fines by arguing the helmet contact was incidental rather than an overt attempt to initiate. So in 2023, the league has tweaked the rule to make successful appeals less likely, removing the requirement to "initiate" contact and adding specific examples of impermissible contact.

 

[AMPHAR]

On 9/10/2023 at 6:56 PM, GapControl said:

Myles will be thinking about the Bengals when he shines his HOF bust 

 

hahaha …. Jonah Williams…. He went first round! 

Who Cares?  He can join Joe Thomas in never seeing the playoffs, I guess.

Meanwhile the Bengals top players from the same era that actually played in the postseason will struggle in the HOF voting.   i.e.  Willie Anderson and probably Whitworth.

 

[GapControl]

On 9/11/2023 at 12:40 PM, HoosierCat said:

They had a top-5 run game in 2014 with Hill and Gio. Hill was a rookie and ran for a career-high 1,124 yards while Gio, in his second year, added 680. When they went to Cleveland that December, Andy played like Burrow did yesterday: 14/24, 117, 0 TD, 1 INT, 53.6 rating.  The D also got two turnovers that day. The difference between then and now? Hill, Gio and Rex Burkhead laid a combined 241 rushing yards on the Clowns and the Bengals walked out with a 30-0 victory. 

I forgot about Hill and Gio - fumble killed Hill’s career I think 

[GapControl]

On 9/12/2023 at 8:56 AM, AMPHAR said:

Who Cares?  He can join Joe Thomas in never seeing the playoffs, I guess.

Meanwhile the Bengals top players from the same era that actually played in the postseason will struggle in the HOF voting.   i.e.  Willie Anderson and probably Whitworth.

 

They may make the playoffs this year but then again , I think that almost every year and they can’t 

[GapControl]

On 9/11/2023 at 1:01 PM, AMPHAR said:

2014.  Bengals extended Dalton after a horrible playoff melt down in 2013.  Mistake.  Bunch of skill position injuries throughout the year.  Dalton bad year.   They got blown out on Thursday Night vs. Cleveland.   Then leaned on the run game the rest of the way and earned a wild card birth.  Along the way ending Johnny Football's career.

2018 would count.  Mixon's best year or 2nd best year but a lost year overall.    

Although not running per say.  Last year they turned the offense struggles around by throwing underneath to Mixon, Perine, and Hurst.   

yeah I had forgotten some of those times I guess … I blame Ogbuehi for scarring my memory … and Russell Bodine a little too 

I see them throwing to the backs a lot more since Burrow and Taylor got together.  It’s part of their spread. 

[TJJackson]

O O O O O G I E E E E

[HoosierCat]

Well, might not have to worry about Chubb til next season. That looked ugly.