Week 2: Ravens @ Bengals

This hasn't gotten completely away from us yet. However, it's a disappointing showing for the D. The offense is the saving grace for e change. New set of downs. Let's see if they can chip away at the lead some more.

Judon is a penalty machine looking for trouble.

Tavon Young needs to wrap up.

 

dumb ass throw to the short guy when he had the TE open at the 2nd level..... ffs STOP CHECKING DOWN JOE.....

 

Gambled an lost. Didn't agree with that call on a 4th down conversion. Allen gave a great effort but just not enough.

 

This one can still come down to the wire. Bengals haven;t been scoring or even moving the ball as well. They're in a hole but making some headway in digging themselves out.

 

The o-line is trash. They gotta move Hurst back to LG and just try Brown at RT. Hurst at RT is bad. Skura at center is bad also

 

Ugh, they are giving us hope. I feel the letdown coming though

 

Losses suck, but a close loss from this far back is a moral victory for a team with lousy offense.

I expected they'd go for a 2pt conv. and happy they got it. Now we're a FG away and they ate up a ton of clock.

 

Bengals are finding their groove again. They gotta keep 'em in check!

 

FG. 31-23 3 min to go. Can Flacco get it done or will he continue to FAIL at Cinci....

 

Can't spot a team 21 points and hope to win. Had the defense gotten even one stop earlier in the first half it'd be a different ball game now

 

I watched Peyton manning come back on a Monday night against Tampa Bay after Tampa had over 30 points scored to win a game. Anything is possible but this is Flacco and he gives up at the end of games way too often

 

game over, blitz and joe takes too long to throw.... pathetic

 

Yeah, we definitely don't have Peyton Manning under center.

First, the defensive play calling in the first half was trash. Too many blitzes when you couldn't even touch the QB.

And then too many Lamar plays after being down 21. You cant get cute at that point. And then just Joe being Joe. 1-1 Ravens

 

dink and dunk in the final minute. good grief.... another season of this crap last minute offense. They are ready to go home

 

Did we really expect to see a whole lot of change on defense from a guy that studied under Pees? I'm not writing Wink off, but when his "formula" failed he had no answer to it. Creedit to the Cincy OL and OL coach for keeping Dalton's jersey clean all night.

 

So, let's discuss this loss. Be warned, this will be long. As much as I wanted and hoped for a blowout in the Ravens favor, it's just not surprising to see a loss to the Bengals. It's not surprising to see AJ Green embarrass the defense. It's not surprising to see a flat road game performance from Baltimore.

Let's start with the bad

- The o-line. At this point, the only good player on it was Yanda. Stanley got beat bad a few times. Skura has no strength and was walked back to the QB the few times I watched him. Hurst is a turnstile. Lewis is just another guy. Flacco's going to get a lot of the blame, but he was under duress far too much. Hell, he made a few completed pass with guys literally hanging on him, like Carlos Dunlap for example. They couldn't even open up running lanes consistently. With 10 days off, they need to start Brown and move Hurst back to LG. And find someone to replace Skura. Any backup might be an improvement so long as they can snap the ball properly.

- Play calling. It can't just be Marty at this point. It has to be Harbaugh. 61 drop back attempts by Joe (including sacks and scrambles) and only 15 runs by your backs. That's insane. We came out passing for the second week in a row. Same shit happened back when Cam was OC. It happened when Trestman was OC. It happens now with Marty as OC. It simply has to be Harbaugh and it needs to stop. And before anyone says it, yes I know they needed to throw to play catch up late in the game, but 8 of the first 12 offensive plays (not including Lamar with the ball in his hand plays) were passes. Hell, after Cincy punts on their opening drive, if they start with a run, Joe doesn't throw that one play INT and start a bad chain if events. When they got the ball back only down 8, marty calls 3 straight passes that resulted in a fumble on 3rd down.

- The d-line. The Bengals had, I think, a 3rd string center, a second string RT, and had flat out concerns about the right side of their line before that center came in. No sacks. Andy Dalton was back there playing Madden to see if the play worked before he threw it, On top of that, the d-line couldn't clog the running lanes at all. Someone please tell me again why we're paying Brandon Williams? This is not hyperbole, I don't remember him in the game. I really don't. I just checked the stats after typing that. He had 2 assisted tackles. The Bengals RBs averaged over 4 yards per carry and totaled 111 yards rushing and we paid him specifically to stop the run.......but all he had was 2 assisted tackles. I said it was a bad contract when it happened, and he continues to prove me right.

- Wink. His last time as a DC was horrible and I can see why. He's another DC that doesn't know how to adjust in came. Blitzing Dalton wasn't working at all in the first half. Letting Tavon Young cover AJ Green wasn't working at all. But for whatever reason, outside of Rex and Pagano, we don't know how to adjust until half time. It's like they need to go to the locker room to grab a difference set of plays. Why wait until the second half to bracket AJ Green??? It's freaking AJ Green!!!

- Harbaugh. I don't remember if I've ever suggested we need to move on from him......but I am now. I'm accepting that a lot of these issues are on him. We simply can't keep having the same issues regardless of who's out there and not blame the man on the top. No urgency near the end of the game, and that's a normal thing in Baltimore. No adjustments. Always looking like he doesn't have a damn clue about what's going on. I don't know who's a better option, but I hope DeCosta/Biscotti find him.

Let's also talk about the good

- Kenny Young. This kid should have been starting over Peanut from day 1. The guy is a baller. I personally hope they don't pay Mosley so I really hope he continues to perform as he is before they look at that contract. Kenny can cover, period. He was running with Mixon, Eifert, even Ross at one point. He plays fast as hell and his instincts are crazy. He had a rookie mistake or two, but they potential is immense.

- Marlon Humphrey. The Bengals didn't even try him. They couldn't. He even made open field tackles. I hope Jimmy can stay healthy because the two of them with Carr behind them (he wasn't bad either) will be crazy.

- Resiliency. I'll say this much, last year's Ravens lose 42-7 or something. All things considered, this team fought back to get in the game in the second half. Wink made adjustments that helped. Unfortunately it was too little too late. I'll still take this as a positive. They didn't give up, even when down 21-0.

- The new WRs. John Brown is the best WR on the team. Crabtree isn't as great as I was expecting, but he's not bad. Snead is what I call "sneaky". They are an improvement over what we've had the last few years, and would likely do much better if the line was worth a damn.

- The TEs. Boyle had his penalties, but they've been good so far this season. Andrews is a baller. Boyle and Williams are playing better than expected in the passing game. Again, they might be better also if the line could hold up.


I think that's all I got. Not all that much good going on

 

Thanks RR, that was a lot of analysis so I will just add my own thoughts that somewhat correspond to the items you pointed out.

Brandon Williams is terrible. He is stealing money from the Ravens. I am not sure why we paid him when we could replace him with an undrafted guy pretty seamlessly. (Pierce)

I love Kenny Young. He looks like a tornado out there. He is all over and I saw him in coverage a few times as well and he is good in coverage.

No pass rush? We made the makeshift Bengals O Line look like the great wall of China. I cannot imagine what the issue was as to why we could not get a finger on Dalton all night.

Our O Line is definitely not on the same page. They are not getting any push and are getting beat by pass rush at several positions. I would love to see what RR suggested and move Hurst to LG, push Lewis to center and get Brown out at RT and get rid of Skura.

Also, at critical moments of the game, why is Boyle blocking Geno Atkins one on one (I think it was Atkins, but could have been Dunlap). He got beat like a drum which let to the arm hit and the pick in the late 3rd quarter or early 4th quarter.

I cannot understand why we come out and are so pass happy again. Perhaps it is because the line is so weak, but we have yet to establish a run game or even identify which running plays are our most effective. If this trend continues, Buck Allen will lead the league in catches. You can't tell me that if we put Brown at RT, that Brown and Yanda can't get push and allow us to run to the right side more effectively.

I am totally tired of the Lamar experiment. Having him trot out and push Flacco out to the wideout position is stupid. Flacco does not even move when the ball is snapped. I specifically watched it last night. The ball is snapped and he is perfectly still like a statue. Lamar keeps the ball and it ends up being a 2 yard gain every time. I thought this experiment was being "cooked up" in the lab and we would see some actual imagination.

I can see some bad blood brewing the more Lamar is inserted and Joe is pushed out from under center. After the TD to Brown, Lamar cam up to high five Joe and he totally dissed him and walked away. That is what it looked like on the broadcast, and if I saw it, then I know others did as well.

We have a long layoff to get ready for Denver, but my expectation is that they will shred our O Line and there will again be no running game and Joe will be on his butt the majority of the day.

 

PART I

Completely agree here. Start by sticking Bozeman in for Skura ASAP. They completely fell flat and let Joe down. Joe IS going to get the blame because that's how pundits and fans are. Joe threw for 376 yards on 55 attempts. I'f I'm grading the OL at an F, all they had to give was a D+ effort for Joe to get to the offense to get to the end zone one more timeIt's important to note that Lamar Jackson would've fared worse. There wasn't any place for even HIM to run. Hell, there wasn't any room for the running backs and they specialize in that shit! 70 total rush yards is a disgrace, but it WAS the passing game that kept them in it even at 21-0.

Maybe it's Harbs. Certainly the buck stops with him for bringing in his OCs and positions coaches. Coming up as a special teams coach, maybe he relies too much on the OCs for the X's and O's. One name you left out is Kubiak who called great games and had an intimate understanding of the X's and O's as a former back up QB. I'm not yet ready to write Harbaugh off, but the fact is that he (and Ozzie) have put together lackluster offenses. I really think they try to take the thinking out of the game for Flacco and Joe has been too compliant in that regard. When he makes decisions on his own he can surprise you. They might just be trying too hard to micro manage the process and control the outcome of the game.

This was disappointing. The defense looked gassed and weak at the POA. They got no penetration and barely even got close to Dalton all night. I'll have to give them credit for that offense because Mixon WILL keep a defense honest up front while they have so many BIG targets for Dalton to hit. This allowed them to use 3-TE sets on occasion which opened up Green and Boyd and once in a while one of the TEs would shed a block for a screen. Dalton too, was on 3-5 step drop backs and was able to get the ball off fast. Wink had ZERO answer for that. That is a highly talented and well coached offense. Had Mixon not suffered an injury it could've looked much, much worse.

I'm not a Wink guy. Never was on board with his promotion, and would rather have Pees back, honestly. And that wait til half time to make defensive adjustments has DEFINITELY been a Harbaugh thing in letting it go on far too long in virtually every game. When he had Ray Lewis, Ray made the adjustments and save Harbs the mental energy. Mosley too was doing a great job, but he's going to be out a few weeks with a bone bruise.

Harbs used to have that urgency and Joe at one point was rivaling the elites for 4th quarter comebacks. It seems like Harbs lost that fire in his belly. On the sideline he looked disappointed and lost. He was doubled over like he was going to be sick at one point. His is not the same guy that came in 11 seasons ago. He's safe at least until the end of this season, because who the hell else can they give the reigns too? Marty? Wink?

 

Was there a trade post game that isn't being reported? What did the Ravens give up to acquire Ross?

 

PART II

Young is a breath of fresh air and a great fill in for Mosley, but he is inexperienced in diagnosing as a leader. Not sure who took that role over for Mosley, but Young was all over the field himself. Humphrey did get beat on on occasion especially by Boyd and and Uzomah for scores/FDs. However, he was all over the field. No recorded stats likely because of what you said, but I did see him beaten a couple times. I'm not sure how he didn't get at least an assisted tackle on Eifert. #29 laid into his ribs and I thought for sure he'd be out of the game.

Did you mean John "Brown" is the best WR on the team? I'll agree with that one. Ross sucks for the Ravens

The TEs are definitely contributing. Boyle had at least 2 false starts and one last game. He has to stop that shit! But he is perhaps the most proven receiver of theme all. That run they game to Williams for a FD was a good call. Wonder why Ricard didn't get that call - he's usually their HB go-to.

I'll add that Judon had another avoidable penalty and is looking to rough the passer and commit sneaky PFs. He committed a trip on Mixon too that was luckily not called, but he's really starting to piss me off. Wink better get his wild ass with the program because he gave the Bengals a new set of downs in the 2nd qtr.

Overall it was a disappointing night because they seem better than that. They DID show resiliency which gave me hope as I watched them chip away at the lead. Not getting that 2pt conv. was back breaker, but it was the right call. All but one of the 4th down attempts was a good call. Doing so at just about midfield when the game is still winnable is pure desperation and bad judgement.