Thursday night we posted a Joe Reedy piece that quoted Cedric Benson's frustrations with the Bengals offense, which were made on Sirius NFL Radio. Originally we weren't exactly sure what Benson was meaning, if it wasn't frustration about the lack of attempts, or generally speaking the team's effort to run the football. Benson went on to get to the heart of the matter on Friday, calling it a lack of identity with the team's offense.
“I think everyone’s frustrated because it really ain’t that hard. It’s not difficult at all. It’s really easy,” Benson said. “It can be made difficult by just people trying to make it difficult. It’s all about execution. You can make anything happen if you execute and not override the system.
“We should have an identity right now, we’ll work it out. Things are going to get straight after this weekend.”
Now this, makes sense. But again, I'm not sure if two games into the season would give a team enough time to get that identity. You can't include the preseason simply because there's really limited time the entire offense is on the field together. New England forced us into spraying the football, while against Baltimore, which I figure is the core of Benson's frustration, the Bengals didn't move the ball particularly well. But again, the Ravens defense tends to wipe out offensive identities, forcing you to play their game. In our case, we played and beat them at their own game. Isn't that an identity?
Still, Benson has a point and if the team rights the ship over the weekend, he could quickly become a greater leader with this team, labeling problems, addressing them and then ultimately leading the team over them.