Mulligans In Football: Bengals Need To Reset Season After 38-24 Loss To New England

Look, I agree that it’s too early to panic; it’s a long season and we’ve still got tons of talent. We can still have a good season, make the playoffs, etc.

That said, we were all thinking that our Bengals could be Super Bowl contenders and that type of success appears fairly unlikely. Are there mulligans in the NFL? Yeah, but Super Bowl winning teams typically don’t need them. Super Bowl teams have flat weeks during the season and sometimes need to regroup, but this was the first damn game. They had 6 months to prepare.

The issue really isn’t the loss. The Pats are good and were playing at home, but we looked undisciplined, ill-prepared, poorly coached and mentally weak. That happens, but not in the first game when expecations are sky high. They showed a stunning lack of maturity and that’s just a fact.

Obviously, the game this week is huge, and I’m glad it’s at home. They need to play 4 quarters of focused, disciplined ball to get this thing rolling in the right directly. I’d love nothing more than to have them prove me wrong.

1. Both Shipley & Gresham “made their marks.” I couldn’t find Golden Tate or Dez Bryant in game stats.

2. Remove the touchdowns from the intercepted pass & the kickoff runback, and it’s a tie game.

3. In the 14 games played so far, the home teams lead 11-3.

The punting was also better. One part of the team what was viewed as a weakness did pretty well. Shipley is what we thought he would be as well. TO seemed a bit winded at times but he did draw some coverage from Chad. Gresham is still learning a tough position but showed the game isn’t too big for him.

We weren’t the only team to have disappointing losses. Dallas and the Colts did as well to teams worse than the Pats. The Texans also showed that they will play the Ravens pretty tough in Texas. The Ravens will also have a short week and they havn’t beat the Jets yet. Tonight I will be a Jets fan. The breakdown on KO coverage showed a disappointing lack of discipline but that will, i am sure, be fixed. If we are going to have a bad game is is also good that it was against a team that probably would have beaten us as home even if we did play well on both lines.

I’d rather see an aggresive defense attacking the offense at the line and occasionally break down than a bend-but-don’t-break approach which continues to allow easy passes and tackle runningbacks 5 yards down field. But whatever we do, we NEED to get some pressure on the QB. Tom Brady had enough time to read a Tom Clancy novel on a few of his passes.

"It’s Bratkowski’s routes. Everything is a right-angle to the direction of travel on the field. Right-angled crossing routes. The problem with that is that the defense can set up a simple layered defense and that shuts down either the short to medium depth route or the medium to far depth route. Ask yourself as a defensive coordinator… …what’s the smartest to defend against? Easy! Defend the short to medium routes and bank on your defensive line to penetrate the offensive line given enough time — and time is EXACTLY what it takes to run those medium to far routes.

See, here’s the problem, one needs to have not just seams but ANGLES. Run a deep crossing route (which outside of a busted play — rarely every see a completion — it’s sole purpose is to draw a safety and corner deep and clear out the middle) AND a short cross with the TE AND then a slant from the slot receiver or just a plain ol’ receiver! Now you have a spread offense — unintentional/intentional pick plays — linebackers that can’t drop back into coverage for lo and behold a draw is called. You spread everything out, you have used three dimensions. The defense doesn’t have a fucking clue where you are going. The pass opens up the running game and the running game opens up the passing game. It isn’t ‘rocket surgery’ folks! it certainly is true that Bratkowski doesn’t know what he’s doing though…

Now, you ask: “How’s that affecting Palmer?” Well for one, he has to elevate the ball (read: a high pass) to clear all the underneath guys and that means that at ten yards, he has to drill the ball and that means that many receivers aren’t going to be able to cleanly ‘field’ the ball. That means that the defense can ‘sit on the ball’ and scheme and wait all day for Palmer — which means he is going to get sacked, incomplete or intercepted — or at least a stronger than usual (for a pro QB) chance that such is going to happen.

Run that slant and linebackers have to respect that quick five yard speed play slanting inside. That means that run support is left wanting. Better running game, brings the safeties and CB’s up — meaning you now have a ‘mano-a-mano’ matchup where if your WR’s are better and faster than their DB’s, you’ve got a quick six! But…

Let the offense be run by that stagnant mind of one Bratkowski…."

What do you all think?

The 1st half looked like preseason, & the Bengals were not the only team that proved that not giving your starters enough reps in preason will cost the team an open game loss! The 1st half of this game should have played itself out a little more in preseason then we might be talking about a win! Watching the opening week of the NFL has proven to be a waist of time for anyone looking for quality football. The opening week is also a poor indicator for what’s to come. Next week’s Baltimore game will be the benchmark for the season. P.S. FIRE BRAT! SAID IT LAST YEAR, SAYING IT AGAIN THIS YEAR! Let Carson call his own plays!

I blame the coaching staff for this loss. Poor game plan and very poor play calling. You HAVE to BLITZ Tom Brady to FORCE him to make a mistake… No team in the NFL can afford to wait for him to make mistakes on his own. Keeping Brady off the field is just as important as blitzing him when he is on the field. Benson didn’t look good on his first few attempts at attempting to pound the ball on obvious running plays. So, they try to stretch the defense with 15+ yard pass attempts… didn’t work. There are more ways to open a running game than these 2 options, like DRAWS and SCREENS for example. The fairy tale that you have to “quick score” to get back in the game is stupid when your playing the likes of a Brady or Manning… Your not going to match them. Keep them off the field and keep the score close and control the football… Period! The entire 2nd stats for the Bengals is bogus… The Pats were so far ahead, they pretty much played prevent defense the rest of the game. Watch the films guys, it is all in there… open up the playbook a little more to include screens and draws plays and for goodness sake, BLITZ the crap out of the Bradys, Mannings, and Rogers of the league if you want to win,

Josh, O.J. Mayo plays for the Memphis Grizzlies. Jerod Mayo plays for the New England Patriots.

Hoe can a team line up two TEs and Welker on one extreme side and not have a D respond to it? Someone should have called a TO as the miss match is obvious. I knew what was coming while Brady was still under center. The formation basically screamed “Hey we are going to throw it to Welker and have the two TEs take out your corner and safety so he can score. Is that Okay?” I guess it was Okay because ML or Zim just let them have it. They probably would have scored anyway the way the D was playing but why make it so easy. I was really disappointed with Zim’s efforts with the D. He is the one who had the biggest “deer in the headlights” look. Marvin looked like he was ready to throw up halfway thru the 1st quarter.

I agree with Bengal Anthony 13. This is such a typical Bengal performance. They suck people in and get them interested and then come out and look like a high school team, particularly in big games. They were totally unprepared and didn’t handle anything the pats threw at their defense. Their offense was totally predictable. They ran up alot of meaningless yards and points in the second half after they were totally embarassed and the game was over. I saw this on another blog and it’s true. The pats are like a fortune 500 company and the Bengals are mom and pop and it shows. I am a long time Bengals fan living in New England. The Pats did nothing that they haven’t done for the last 3 years. They out executed, out prepared and outcoached the Bengals. I think the Bengals have more talent and the Pats will turn out to be not that good this year. Sadly I have seen this many times over many years. It’s the organization and the management as much or more than the coaching and players. I’d like to see them win but they have let me down too many times.