Greetings from Cincy Jungle - Ask a Bengals fan

That should do it.

Right now, you ask 10 Bengals fans what the hell is wrong with the Bengals passing offense, you’ll get 11 answers. And yes, my math is solid man!

Lately, the Bengals passing offense is a short, dink and dunk passing game, with the hopes of finding Chad running a square-in route about 10-15 yards off the line of scrimmage. This passing offense is largely based on timing and there’s just no rhythm there. It’s Chad or broke right now and other teams are suffocating Chad.

If you pressure Palmer enough, he’ll make a good share of mistakes. And quite honestly, this offense is built to run so the offensive line isn’t able to protect Palmer for very long.

My impressions of these units are this:
The safeties have been a turnstyle with different guys getting chances to fill in due to injuries. I know Tom Nelson was playing safety a bunch in week 13 and, for those that watched Hard Knocks, he was not supposed to be a starter.
The CBs (Leon Hall and Jonathan Joseph) are really, really solid, but I know Joseph is under 6’0. I want to say that Hall is a little taller and he’s by far the better of the two.
The pass rush lost its best weapon a while back when Antwan Odom went on IR. Fanene seems like a guy that’s always around the ball, but I’m not sure that he’s all that talented (more of a journyman on a hot streak). Geathers is just okay and Johnson and Rucker have some skills, but still haven’t been the threats that some thought they might becomes (albeit that Johnson is still probably developing). Peko and Johnson are solid DTs, but are more about runstopping than pass rushing.

If you can figure that out between now and then, please share it with Cincy’s coaching staff.

LOL. No man. The Bengals are now reformed and out of prison.

Their most complete game was a 45-10 win over the Chicago Bears. We put up 45 on them with four first half touchdown passes from Palmer. Along with that, Benson ran for nearly 190 yards. The defense picked off Cutler three times (not that it’s a hard thing to do this year) and limited the Bears to under 40 yards rushing.

At its best, the Bengals passing offense and rushing offense picks up chunks of yards. Sadly, at its best only represents what they’ve done against the Bears. The passing offense is in such a state of struggle that most Bengals fans are very, very concerned.

And no. I don’t believe that the Bengals, the way they’re playing right now, are good enough to beat any of the elite best teams.

Don’t forget about Palmer.

I think the coaching staff and FO really likes players that come out of USC. Seeing the products they put out, who can blame them? We call ourselves USC East. :)

His greatest attribute and biggest detriment that we’ve seen this year is his aggressiveness. As much as he puts his hat down and becomes a wrecking ball, he over shoots gaps and takes really bad angles. He’s worked really hard and improved on his pass coverage. But he can’t catch a football if it was handed off to him.

He’s clearly a rookie but he is improving.

Peko is out, as is our starting safety Chris Crocker. It’s evident that when Peko is out the rush defense suffers. With him out, the Bengals will start Pat Sims and Tank Johnson (who’s getting healthier having one of his best games last week against the Vikings). After that, we have a massive talent loss with Orien Harris.

But the biggest difference on rush defense is the aggressiveness this defense has. We run blitz a lot, filling gaps and our secondary is pretty aggressive against the run.

Brad St. Louis, the former snapper, was often responsible for sailing snaps well over the holders head. Nearly 15 points (extra points and field goals) were attributed to terrible snaps by St. Louis.

Pittman was one of four snappers we brought in for a workout in early October. We ended up signing Clark Harris, whose all but eliminated our snapping issues we had earlier in the year.

In truth, this is an on-going debate. But our offense misses a guy like T.J. I mean, it’s obvious through the production why we’d miss him. But he was damn good at figuring out what defenses wanted to do, finding gaps, lanes and holes in the zones to sit and wait.

Caldwell, we figured, was supposed to be the guy that took that mantel of possession receiver. Instead, he’s largely disappeared the second half of the season. Coles has largely disappointed. He doesn’t get open very much underneath and when he does, he drops passes more than Rey Maualuga.

Also, questions are being raised now that perhaps Palmer’s elbow isn’t as healed as we were led to believe.

might have to say chad “hachi go” haha! i wonder what plan he has this weekend if he scores… i know one thing for sure
If the Lightning dont get you, the Thunder will! GO BOLTS

I’ll call him Johnson.

Not really. We just call him Chad. Though it took me nearly nine months to actually acknowledge him as “Ochocinco.”

That wasn’t Sheffler, it was Stokely

Hall hasn’t gone up against Moss so far this year, but I have no doubt he’ll stack up well against him if we meet the Pats in the playoffs. With both of our corners, you’re getting two of the best guys in football. You might get lucky and beat them once or twice, but that’s it. Neither of them will get abused. The one thing you may have in your favor is how tall your receiving corps is as a unit. That would be my one and only concern re: coverage issues for Sunday.

Neither team has a bad DVOA. They just aren’t ranked among the top 10 in DVOA. By DVOA and strength of schedule, both teams are playing at a level where their records would be 7-5, which is not bad.

One of the big things will be how well you can set up your protection schemes. A 3-4 defense will almost always keep the 3 linemen in for run defense and to help with the pass rush and then bring any of the linebackers to help. The 4-3 will send 4 every time and usually rely on their best pass rushers to beat their matchups to get penetration and pressure. Obviously, a 4-3 may use stunts or blitzes to create pressure, but for the most part its 4 men trying to get by 5 OL. The deception involved in the 3-4 bringing linebackers from different angles on almost every play and then mixing in the same techniques as the 4-3 (stunts and blitzes) make it incumbent on the QB and OL to understand the protection and make sure everyone gets blocked. The deception also carries over to the passing game. Assuming that the 3-4 defense has corners that aren’t piss poor the QB will need to figure out the zone defense that the linebackers and safeties that remain in coverage are doing. LBs and Ss will roll their coverages to make up for the missing LB that rushed on the play and the QB will need to understand what openings that creates for the passing game. In the running game, the deception isn’t as important since you will need to get everyone blocked anyway. All the DL and LBs will start near the line of scrimmage and you can pick out your man and block him. This is probably why Polamalu is so good for the Steelers he’s so fast and can read plays so even when the offense thinks they can block everyone in the front 7 on a running play, Troy can sprint from the secondary to RB and break up the play. In the absence of a Polamalu it is incumbent on the front 7 to get off their blocks and get to the RB. Sound familiar? That’s what players in the 4-3 do anyway, so that might help in the running game. Obviously, the best players will play well in either scheme and certain players are ideally suited for a certain scheme. Ray Lewis at his peak could do everything an ILB in a 3-4 and a 4-3 whereas Dwight Freeney probably couldn’t handle the coverage responsibilities of the 3-4 DE and Shaun Phillips probably doesn’t have size, strength and pass rushing moves to go one-on-one vs a OT on every play.

Why would the Bengals succeed vs a 3-4 and not a 4-3. I already mentioned how a good running game can succeed against at 3-4. You get a hat on a hat and the RB finds the hole. In the passing game you need OL and a QB that can identify pressure and make good, quick decisions. Against the 4-3 you’ll probably need more talented and versatile OL to make sure they win their individual matchups both in the running and passing game. So, if I were looking at where I thought the Bengals strengths and weakness vs the 3-4 and 4-3 are, I would look to the OL (assuming they have an experienced and smart QB, which I think they do).

for one, we can’t put those numbers up anymore.
two, we don’t have to (usually). our defense is much better than it was in those days.

we’re built to play in january in the snow. run the football, play solid d, control the clock. the problem with this team is if we get behind by 2 scores late in the game, that formula doesn’t really work.

the first half of this game will be huge for determining the outcome.

Except for the 45 we put up against the Bears and 31 against the Packers, we haven’t scored more than 23 points in any other game this year. On the other hand, we allowed 30 points last week, which is the most we gave up all season and in five of the past six games before that, we’ve only allowed 13 points or less.

I’ll be surprised if either team scores more than 30 points — just like I claimed that I’d be surprised if the 2-7 Raiders would beat us.

Unfortunately the injuries he suffered are considered life threatening. Keep him in your prayers.

was placed on IR a couple of weeks ago.

terrible situation that occurred though, no doubt

his spot on the roster is a moot point because he’s been on IR for about 6 or so weeks now, so he doesn’t count towards the 53 man roster. a decent amount of bengals fans are hoping jerome simpson, our 2nd rounder 2 years ago will take over the deep threat role, but he went to coastal carolina and didn’t have a ton of football knowledge, he just plays. i assume similar to VJ.

and if history shows us anything, it’s that the bengals will rally in the face of adversity. earlier this season when our defensive coordinator’s wife died suddenly, the bengals dug deep for a very emotional and hard fought victory. i’m hoping they can muster that strength again.

you’ll hear a lot about henry, but most of what you’ll hear about this season and the past few years is that he was turning his life around, staying out of trouble and that his fiance was a major player in that. it’s just ironic that the one person who could help him get his life on track was integral in the loss of it.