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[Ox]

Drop me a PM if you want the goods.

Summary - the bengals defense is what's going to kill us. The offense is basically going to have to win all of our games, if we are to advance.

Duh?

Anyways let me know if you're interested in the article this week.

[bengalboomer7]

Dead on article

I knew Deltha was palying good, but that's some #'s

Unfortunately, I knew Tory was playing that bad

[HoosierCat]

For those who want the condensed version, the article is solely concerned with the pass D. The long and the short of it is that the Bengals (thanks to O'Neal) are great long, OK short, and iffy in the middle (no news to anyone who's been paying attention). The interesting conclusion? The team we match up best against in that respect in the playoffs?

Pittsburgh.

[Ox]

The interesting conclusion? The team we match up best against in that respect in the playoffs?

Pittsburgh.

I know, ain't it great? Maybe ironic is a better fit.

[ShulaSteakhouse]

And Deltha's out this week, hope he is 100% next week. Ratliff is going to get a workout this weekend, and the Bengals' safeties are obviously what's been killing them.

The LB's have stepped up the 2nd half vs the run, the db's and the de's have not. James has not been very good, but he's been hurt by lack of support, otherwise he's still a competent weak side corner.

It's hard to be hopeful with the situation they're in right now, but perspective says next season should be even better with a good off-season. Anything they do before then is gravy.

[alleycat]

Wow, Ox. Thanks for the article. Amazing.

This basically puts numbers to everything I've been saying about the D this year. Tory is not good AT ALL, Deltha is great, and everything is made worse by our TERRIBLE pass rush. We need to draft a corner along with our S, DE (higher priority for me than DT, especially since Geathers seems to be playing DT as much as anything these days anyway), and DT.

Three holding calls on blockers against our pass rushers all season long? Geesh. That says something about our speed rush.

I think his argument is dead on about Manning and Brady being able to carve this D up, but, I think our relative new strength against the run does also give us a better matchup against Denver and Jax.

What the numbers obviously don't take into account is whose D we would rather play against with our O.

[HoosierCat]

The interesting conclusion? The team we match up best against in that respect in the playoffs?

Pittsburgh.

I know, ain't it great? Maybe ironic is a better fit.

Ironic it is. Looking at this piece, I was reminded of another...

http://www.coldhardfootballfacts.com/Artic...449&Category=11

And not just because of this little factoid...

Under Cowher, the Steelers have NEVER won a playoff game against a team that won its division and had a record of 11-5 or better.

But that should give a lift to everyone so I thought I would point it out.

But there's also the fact that if you scroll down to the second table in this piece -- the one dealing with rush v. pass yardage and how the only time they even came close was when they had a passing game -- well, I think their current ranking (6 rushing, 26 passing) say it all.

But even that's not it. It's the fact that going into the playoffs our defense is at least halfway to where we want it: to be successful in the playoffs you have to be able to stop the run, which we are doing. That obviously encourages the pass, which has burned us some the last few weeks, but we need our corners and safeties to step it up! The bottom line is that we have a four-game season coming up and it's go time.

I like our chances as much as anyone else's.

[jjakq27]

Joisey, Great article!