1st Team Offense/Palmer

[Section 310]

Anyone growing a bit uneasy about the offense? They are supposed to be a juggernaut, yet Washington's 1st string defense shut them down. While Rudi ran the ball well, they didn't seem to have any rhythm or energy. Carson was being pressured (due to a lack of Willie??) and the short to intermediate passing game was non-existent. It wasn't until the reserves came into the game that Cincy started moving the ball. I am glad that Marvin left Palmer in the game long enough to have some success. The last thing we need is for our QB to struggle this year.

On the positive side, Perry looks phenomenal, and we actually threw the ball to our TE's a couple of times. I think Rudi and Perry will be a potent combination.

How would you like to try to bring down Rudi? The guy looks like a fire hydrant.

Next week I would like to see more fire and less rust from the first teamers.

[Bobcat Bengal]

There were quite a few three and outs that I wasnt happy with.

Itll come in time though.

Were just being impatient.

[andybren]

Let's not forget that Washington's first team defense is pretty good.

Hobson:

...but they still had the third best defense in the NFL last season...

[DontPushMe]

While Rudi ran the ball well, they didn't seem to have any rhythm or energy.

????? What were you watching? Our entire offense was s**t untill Perry got in there (with washington's 1st string defense still in btw). Rudi was terrible last night. And i wont even get started on the 10 yard loss

[icehole3]

After rewatching the tape, Im convinced this offense is ready. Basically it begins and ends with Palmer. He is straw that controls the Bengal franchise. Granted it takes Marvin to evaluate players and to get ego driven players to work together as a unit. Its Palmer IMO that will allow this team not to guess what the problem would be on offense and allows Marvin to grab top talent on defense year after year and also on the O-line. After Palmer drove the offense 93 yards last night he looked as though he couldve scored at will against the Redskins. I also want to give some credit to the coaching staff...a lot of those plays ran were quick hitters that had the Redskins virtually racing past Perry and Watson most of the night, just great play calling. And to come right back to K-Dub against Carlos Rodgers was a great call IMO. Its great to see solid QB play after a generation of sloppy QB play.

[Section 310]

????? What were you watching? Our entire offense was s**t untill Perry got in there (with washington's 1st string defense still in btw). Rudi was terrible last night. And i wont even get started on the 10 yard loss

Washington's first string defense was gone by the time Perry hit the field.

Also, how can you be a Rudi hater? The guy has done a great job since he has been here. He had 4 rushes last night that went 5+ yards. Granted, the 10 yd loss was tough, but it was only possible because he was fighting for yards and bouncing off tacklers.

[gobengals19]

Carson and Chad are not on the same page for some odd reason. I am not concerned about the offense, nothing has changed from last year except we have added Perry and hopefully Pdub. There is no way they can be worse.

Also, if you read comments from Bratkowski, they don t game plan in preseason. Once they figured out what the defense was throwing at them they made the necessary adjustments. If teams are going to blitz [run and pass] on every play which is what Washington was doing last night, we will have to dink and dunk all the way down the field - through Perry, Jerimi Johnson and the TEs [god they are awful, I think Ghent played the best - get rid of Stewart!!!].

My bigger concern is the lack of pass rush and our zone DEF making Ramsey look like a ProBowl QB. I am chalking this upto the new DC and the team learning his schemes while breaking several people in at new positions - Thurman, Johnson and Madieu not in the lineup. Our CBs have played fairly well to date and we have good depth there.

[Kazkal]

Redskins were the only team that kicked carsons and the offenses butt in the last 6 games last year and he somewhat improved from that game I thought so I can't really complain

[CantStop85]

Palmer just needs to remember that there are more receivers on the field than #85.

[Kazkal]

aye I bet i f he threw to TJ or Kdub the first play they'd be like wtf then he can throw to chad on the 2nd heh

[schweinhart]

I found the taking off running to be the most improved part of his game last night...and knowing when not to do it.

He also looks like he's audibling more, whether to designed plays or not.

Throwing wise, he proly needs to take some of the air out of the long throws to Chad and b-line it more. But the touch on his passes is about where it needs to be otherwise....except when he gets rushed. He's got to keep his head in those situations like the Rogers pick last night and not let the velocity of the throw get the better of him.

[schweinhart]

Redskins were the only team that kicked carsons and the offenses butt in the last 6 games last year and he somewhat improved from that game I thought so I can't really complain

You might want to go back and watch that game last year again

The Bengals rolled the mighty Deadskins D in the 1st half: 17-0.

The problem in that game is that 2 halves weren't put together and Washington made the adjustments on D while the Bengals didn't adapt to them at game speed on O.

This Bengals offense is starting to gel the way it did when he finished last year.

Another solid test vs. Eagles next week should give better indication of where that continuation stands.

But I'm seeing 24 pts per game off Bengals offensive drives in the regular season.

[derekshank]

I understand it's the pre-season, and Palmer might have still been trying to get his timing down with his receivers. I also understand that the coaching staff has a separate agenda in the pre-season, trying to run certain plays so they can see how certain players will execute.

However, I find it odd that there Brat would make no game-plan at all. And then Brat makes a somewhat contradictory statement saying "Once we searched around and found out how they were playing us, we knew where we could go with some of that stuff." That doesn't sound to me like there was no game plan, but that they were forced to change it.

I'm not panicking here at all. I'm really not too concerned... but I think Brat's comments are a cop-out. Just admit you ran a very vanilla offense early, and it was so bad that you couldn't even get a first down. Then you changed it up so the players could stay on th field for more than 3 plays at a time.

By the way... Palmer eventually got it rolling the way most of us expect, but he can’t wait until the 2nd quarter to start playing anymore. I really hope Palmer's last 8-11 is more of what we'll see from him, because I don't see other QB's in the league struggling this way, going 4 out of 13.

Culpepper 11-13, 146 yards

Pennington 9-10, 86 yards, 1 TD

McNair 14-19, 137 yards, 1 TD

Vick 6-9, 64 yards, 1 TD

Brady 6-11, 105 yards

I don't think we can blame it on pre-season anymore if Palmer comes out cold again in the 3rd game. At some point we're just making excuses for our mediocrity.

[HoosierCat]

Palmer just needs to remember that there are more receivers on the field than #85.

From Brat's comments in today's bengals.com piece, I think the concentration on Chad last night was intentional, aimed precisely at getting the two of them back in sync. Combined with the fact that Brat just breezily admits that heck, it was preseason and he didn't even bother with a game plan, I feel much better this afternoon about the offense.

[The NES Advantage]

I think the offense is ready to rock. I know this gets used over and over again, but Lewis isn't going to expose his whole playbook to be picked apart by future opponents.

also, Offense always takes a LITTLE BIT longer to get going. I'd say by the final pre season game, especially since first team will probably be out till the fourht quarter, we'll know that the offense is ready to dominate!

[ShulaSteakhouse]

I don't like to see Palmer scrambling so much, he's going to get hurt and came real close to taking two helmet-to-helmet hits (not sure why those weren't called) and completely tearing up his knee.

No reason at all to be scrambling like that period in a preseason game - none.

But I agre the play-calling was outstanding at times, and the other times they probably ran the ball a bit too much, but I assume that's just that they wanted to get some looks at things/people.

If you listened to Cutler on the radio today, I could sware he's on crack. He said Levi looks like a perennial pro-bowler, but I remember vividly two times last night where he got beat and Palmer was pushed out of the pocket or hit, at least. The same thing happened the week before.

Levi will do, but I think we tend to overrate him.

I thought the 0-line was mighty inconsistent and the only guy playing really well was Steinbach - who looks much better this year thank God.

Palmer just needs reps, he finally got some last night and the defense gave him opportunities.

[derekshank]

I think the offense is ready to rock. I know this gets used over and over again, but Lewis isn't going to expose his whole playbook to be picked apart by future opponents.

also, Offense always takes a LITTLE BIT longer to get going. I'd say by the final pre season game, especially since first team will probably be out till the fourht quarter, we'll know that the offense is ready to dominate!

Sure, maybe it does take offense a little longer than a defense to get going. Offense relies very much on timing, which it is clear Palmer did not have early on last night.

However, as I mentioned on a different thread, other QB's around the league are not continuing to struggle with these kind of cold streaks to start off the game.

Other QB's for their 2nd pre-season games:

Culpepper 11-13, 146 yards

Pennington 9-10, 86 yards, 1 TD

McNair 14-19, 137 yards, 1 TD

Vick 6-9, 64 yards, 1 TD

Brady 6-11, 105 yards

This is certainly a lot better than Palmer's first 4-13. His last 8-11 was great, but if he comes out cold to start the game against the Eagles, I'll start getting a little worried. Our defense is not strong enough for our offense to wait until the 2nd quarter to get going.

There is no team in the league that is going to give away their whole offensive playbooks in a pre-season game... but they are still managing to get 1st downs in the 1st quarter. I've been watching the defense primarily this pre-season... But I'll be watching the offense in the 1st quarter of game 3.

[jditty47]

how in the hell does that quote suggest that he changed it. he had no gameplan, then he saw what could work and did it. thats called going with the flow...that is not a change in gameplan.

[BengalPappaw]

I, too, am waiting for our "real" offense to show up.

If I don't see some the offense step it up in the next two pre-season games, I will really be worried.

This doesn't look like the Bengals that my old memory recalls from last year when we were beginning to roll.

But, we aren't in the "real" season -- yet.

[derekshank]

ok ok fine. There was no gameplan.

Does anyone else think that 24 passing attempts is way too many for the first half? I know our running game wasn't getting the job done... and there were also a lot of incompletions, which means it requires quite a few passing attempts to move the ball downfield... but at that rate CP was going to throw the ball 48 times in the game! Way too many.

hopefully it was just a fluke... we'll run the ball better than that, and CP will be more accurate, because 24 is just way too many in a half if we want to be successful.

[membengal]

Didn't see it (NFL Network replay not til Wednesay for gawdssake for us stuck out-of-towners, and couldn't listen to it b/c I was traveling, but...

...sounds like everyone came out of it healthy for the most part

...Palmer led two long scoring drives in the second quarter

...the O improvised those drives despite no game plan

...Perry continues to flash good things

...Odell took another step toward being a monster

AND

...one more time, everyone came out of it healthy for the most part.

Sounds like a fine pre-season exercise then. Drawing broader conclusions or conjuring up new worries off of it is probably a waste of time, what with it being the pre-season and all.

By the way, it's been a joy reading through these threads to catch up on what I missed (with the exception of DPM's boringly predicatable Perry thread, that was the usual waste of time), much appreciated.

[HoosierCat]

I, too, am waiting for our "real" offense to show up.

If I don't see some the offense step it up in the next two pre-season games, I will really be worried.

This doesn't look like the Bengals that my old memory recalls from last year when we were beginning to roll.

But, we aren't in the "real" season -- yet.

Your last line says it all. The games don't count.

Yet.

They still have three weeks to work out the kinks. That said...the one thing that does irk me a bit is the apparent lack of urgency in doing just that. Chad passed a comment in something I read to the the effect that, "don't worry, we have three weeks, we'll get it rght." And Brat's comments basically boil down to, "well, y'know, we were just f***ing around." Well, OK, if Marvin isn't having kittens, I'm not either...but I think it's high time they stopped flapping their gums and started flashing some plays.