Chuck Bresnahan ...

[JPW]

Anyone else remember when Bresnahan was promoted to defensive coordinator last Jan ?

We had a few Raiders fans show up and post about him and IIRC everyone of them had the same knock on him.

It went something like this, he is a very good defensive coordinator except when his team gets a big lead.

They all felt that he had blown games by going into some form of a "soft" defense once Oakland had a big lead late in the game.

So in the future maybe the Bengals should avoid getting up by 34 points on teams ?

[Stripes]

I think this could be an issue with a lot of defensive coordinators out there. It has only happened once, so for now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

[derekshank]

If Bresnahan's biggest liability is allowing points after the game is in hand, I'll take it. There aren't too many blow-outs in the playoffs.

[schweinhart]

Playing with a big lead is a nice problem to have

But the Ratbirds comeback seemed to have more to to with the short field off turnovers by the Bengals offense at least on half the points they got in the last 20 minutes anyway.

I believe Brez lights fire under his players and does well enough w/ the personnel he has.

The scheme vs. Indy troubled me and if the Bengals face the Colts again, I'd say we'll see less priority to stop Edge and a committment to give Tory James lots of help against Reggie Wayne. I doubt there's anything they can do w/ the personnel they have to stop Dallas Clark.

Shaun Smith made inactive vs. the Steelers last time also was troubling but not sure Brez had anything to do with that.

[greenday333]

Since my dad is a huge raider fan ill give my insight since i have seen many a raider game. I dont think that those raider fans were talking about when you have a 34 pt lead but more like a 3 or 7 pt lead. He plays this soft "prevent" defense that allows the teams to drive right down the field. my dad used to go nuts over this. We havent had any (did we?) games this year that came down to us closing the game with a marginal lead, so i guess time will tell. i am just saying that i know what they mean, and i am a little wary of it.

[Columbusbengal]

He plays this soft "prevent" defense that allows the teams to drive right down the field. my dad used to go nuts over this. We havent had any (did we?) games this year that came down to us closing the game with a marginal lead, so i guess time will tell. i am just saying that i know what they mean, and i am a little wary of it.

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that when the Bengals went to the Super Bowl under Sam Wyche, they played that same kind of "prevent defense" and made us all hold our breath whenever we had a lead in the fourth quarter. Someone with a better memory than I have can probably expound on this.

[ShulaSteakhouse]

Common tactic employed by many to not give up quick, big plays with a lead, and instead make them earn it and chew up the clock with underneath plays - thus the prevent/soft defense annoyance so many people have. It's just what you have to do some times, ecspecially when you don't have the personnel to disguise and gamble with (Madeiu is much like Polamalu pre-snap for instance but he's not here).

Chuckie's scheme here is still too simplistic, and he does not have the players to pull of the kind of complex blitzing adn coverages he'd probably like to.

But, you'll notice with experience - Odell is making progress on those snap counts and timed blitzes as he schooled Boller twice last week. Need more of that and more improved play from the LB's. Simmons seems to have disappeared again - sick of him for one.

Best thing to do the rest of this season:

Stop trying to figure it out and just cross your fingers and hope like hell the defense does enough to win games. They are going to suck at times blatantly and be frustrating to watch like they have all year long. But, have to live with it, get over it, and deal with it unfortunately.