Ok, so a nice win versus the Bengals. I was a touch worried as we have been torched by accurate passers and it seems this was a set up for a trap game potential. I like the full team effort and it was a nice little win against a division opponent. What I liked: The defense overall. They were swarming, stout, aggressive and attacked at all levels. Patrick Queen is getting better by the day I liked seeing Ferguson a few times on run stoppage and sniffing out run plays. That was his biggest weakness and it is getting better little by little Special teams is aces as always What I did not like: Our offense. Period. I hate our current offense. I still feel like they are pushing (or Lamar is stressing) the deep passes in spite of what the defense is giving. They are forcing the deep shots, into double coverages and sometimes triple coverages just to try to connect on the deep balls. Lamar is missing wide open shorter routes because he wants to hit on a few deep shots early. I think he needs to concentrate on hitting the open man regardless of where it is and the deeper passes will start to present themselves. Our running game is a mess as well. I feel like we are trying to pound every run right up the middle as if we still have Yanda in there blowing open running lanes. Skura and Powers are not strong at the point of attack and Bozeman seems to be best when pulling and being in space and we are barely utilizing that pulling scheme anymore. I am a bit tired of us always running some gadget plays several times a game when we should be establishing the run. They have worked to a small degree but are getting pretty predictable at this point. I understand we did not want to run Lamar because of the knee tweak that he has, but the runs that seemed to work were the ones that were off tackle and with pulling help. I would like to see more of that. Once again I will say, if we had played a good team, there is a good chance we would have lost and a good chance Lamar would have thrown several picks, 3 potentially, if the defense he faced was any good at all. I feel like we left a ton of points on the field and should have punched a few more TD's in. If we keep leaving points on the table, that will haunt us when we play a decent team.
Yeah with the defense, I'm mentally torn. On one hand, you look and say the Bengals have a bad record and an offensive line designed to get Burrows killed. On the flip side, you see the Bengals coming back in all their other games and Burrows on an NFL rookie streak for 300 yard passing games with everyone talking about how he looks like a franchise player. I guess you just take it for what it was - a great defensive effort with 7 sacks (I believe). The one thing I don't want to happen is for people to say the pass rush is fixed. We got 7 sacks, but how many of them were completely unblocked players? To me, that's a result of coaching and scheme vs the players actually winning their battles. Nothing wrong with that, but it goes both ways. If they Bengals and their players on the OL were better coached, then those holes don't happen (reference KC game). So I guess that's why I'm torn. Great defensive game, but I do not believe the overall pass rushing woes are over. On offense, it's a whole different story. Lamar looked bad out there yesterday. When I was watching the game, in my mind, I kept saying that he already has 2+ INTs on the day (it just felt that bad). He was missing throws all over the place and going solely for deep shots instead of taking the open receiver. I don't want the Ravens to check down, but RBs were wide open all day on the flats and he never even looked that way. Put the ball in a RB hand vs a short pass to Boyle. Was Jackson specifically told not to run because of his knee? That aspect of his game was completely absent aside from one big run that was called back due to penalty. I also saw at one point that he had 35 pass attempts in a game where we were winning by over 2 scores. That was a head scratcher. Why are we keeping two of our best playmakers on the bench? Devin and Dobbins both looked great with limited touches. I think Dobbins got 1 carry yesterday. We are getting absolutely nothing out of Snead and Boykin. Some of that is Lamar who still only looks for Brown and Andrews, but some of it is the players. You can't tell me that Devin doesn't deserve to get in there ahead of both of them. I'd like to see Proche get some snaps also. I realize Boykin has unteachable size, but what's he doing with it? I cannot understand what his issue is. From the time he stepped on the field, there was nothing but praise for him. The first time I saw him in a preseason game, I thought he definitely had the look of a #1 receiver. He's invisible though and plays small. What a waste of talent. It's funny how far we've come as fans. We absolutely dismantled another team, and all our wins this year have been blowouts. That didn't use to be the case for us as fans when we barely scraped by with victories on Sunday. Being in that upper echelon of teams though comes a new set of expectations and realities I suppose.
I agree and disagree with both if you. The one issue isn't Lamar looking for deep shots over shorter passes, the issue is Lamar looking for only Brown and Andrews, and they happen to be going deep. I'm still a huge Lamar fan, but he isn't finding the open guys. It's not that Snead and Boykin aren't getting open, they just aren't getting good looks (although Lamar does seem to throw to Boykin when he shouldn't). Going into Sunday's game, Snead had a perfect catch percentage. He literally caught every pass thrown his waym. Boykin had a higher catch percentage than both Hollywood and Andrews. Duvernay seems to only be allowed 1 or 2 touches a game, but he makes the most of them For example, on that first drive in the redzone, Lamar went deep to Andrews who was well covered when he had Duvernay running a crossing route multiple steps ahead of his man with no defender on the left side. He catches that and it's a guaranteed TD with his speed. We instead get a FG. In terms of Boykin, Harbaugh himself said Miles has been playing well and getting open, he just needs opportunity. I'm not sure if Lamar's injuries (groin in preseason, then knee) are causing him to panic and only go to who he's most comftable with, but that's gotta change. On defense, I'm not sure how to feel. The Bengals line has been known trash all year and Burrow is still a rookie, no matter how good he's looked. As a whole, this defensive performance feels was a fools gold type of game in regards to the pass rush. That said, Humphey is the man!! Bowser has also been slowing improving. I also look forward to seeing Harrison on the field full time. Haven't seen a lot of him, but I remember him chasing down Watson with a great pursuit angle in week 2, and then on Queen's fumble return, Harrison was running stride for stride with him. That was impressive to me since Queen was supposed to be the fast one and Harrison the thumper (although I guess Queen could simply have better agility). Also, I wasn't mad about the pass attempts against Cincy. The passing game needs more work than the run game. Sure, the running hasn't been as great as it was last year, and they refuse to feature Edwards or Dobbins over Ingram, but with the run we know it's either going to work well or work well enough. The passing game needs a lot of work. That said, if you're going to keep slinging it up 14+ against a bad team, I would think a coach would tell their QB to focus on the players we need to see more of, as opposed to the two who are already proven.
