Bettis Words

[USMC203]

Bettis "We don't feel this is a divison up for grabs. It is still the steelers till it is taken from us!" Until we can stop the run he is right. We can not beat a good team till we do that. We have two people that might be able to do it Askew & Smith, but they did not dress. We also need to run more and we have the RB's to do that with Johnson & Johnson and Luchey then Perry outside. We all have seen what Luchey can do to a D line and Rudy pounding inside does, add the other Johnson, one of the best run blockers in the AFC we should run all over other teams by beating the D line down. I have been a Bengals fan before some of you were born and I always will, win or lose (SEMPER FI) for you NON MARINES that neans Always Faithful. Coach Marvin is one of the best coaches in the NFL, but if we can't stop the run and if the powerful O runners don't get to run, any good team will beat us. We will make it to the playoff this year but we need to make some changes or we won't make it through the first round. I hope I did not make any one mad. I am looking for some good replies.

[BengalByTheBay]

Not sure whether this will seem like a "good reply" to you or not, but I'm not sure I agree. I think we can and will beat some good teams while still not really being able to really stop the run. In fact, I don't think we will really be able to do it this year. Here's the deal, when the offense sputters like it did in the first 2 trips into the red zone, that does not help this very mediocre d. We can win games like this -- hell we were down all of 1 point at the half, but the offense has to step on their throat while we're "bending not breaking." If those 3 points (from the first 2 drives) are 10 or 14 then the game looks a heck of a lot different. I think that, in truth, we have to dictate that teams go against our strength on d which is vs. the pass. That requires, however, that the offense convert its opportunities. We get a lead, we continue to run the ball and burn clock (we burned close to 5 minutes before they got the ball on offense). We don't convert and we put the defense into critical stop situations...and we see what happened there. So, while I would like to see a great run defense -- let's face it -- it's not gonna happen this season. We can still win, but we need to quit choking in the red zone on offense.