Bengals: 3 Positives and 3 Negatives after Week 4

What a final drive.

AP Photo

Holy shit, what a game. I’m still trying to process everything that happened.

That was one of the craziest games I’ve ever seen. Talk about a roller-coaster ride – was that fun or what? So much to get to, so let’s dive into it!

Negatives

The Secondary

I heard somebody say defense, what does that mean… because I never saw any kind of overlap between the Bengals and the term defense. The secondary got lit up, and they were the glaring weakness of the defense. William Jackson had the worst game of his career, Kirkpatrick was being Kirkpatrick, and Dennard did not play as well as he should have.

To be fair, the Falcons do have a top 5 wide receiver core, so it was expected to see some struggles from our secondary. However, it wasn’t a struggling battle between our secondary and their wide receivers – it was their receivers giving us a beat down.

The secondary wasn’t getting much help though, there were times the linebackers simply weren’t in the right spot and Teryl Austin has had some questionable play calls. For example, William Jackson and Dre Kirkpatrick are both better in press coverage. However, Austin keeps calling soft coverage, so that’s already making them struggle more than they should. Austin calling soft coverage has let opposing teams destroy us in the red zone.

You may remember William Jackson getting beat by Mohammed Sanu. Well, for whatever reason, we had William Jackson in the slot. William Jackson is not a slot corner. Our cornerbacks played bad, but they weren’t not getting any help.

Bobby Hart

Jesus Hart, what the shit was that?

Hart gave up 3 sacks and 3 pressures in the win on Sunday. That’s horrible. A change at right tackle needs to happen.

We all knew right tackle would be one of the biggest weaknesses on the team this year. It was pretty obvious coming into the season. Hart had his chance, but he just can’t play next week. Fisher deserves another shot.

Is Fisher decent? Absolutely not. But at this point, he can’t be any worse then Hart. It’s impossible at this point. Say what you want about Fisher, but he doesn’t give up 3 sacks in a game. Fisher is a half decent pass blocker, but really struggles in the run game.

What’s the harm in trying him at right tackle again? Worse case scenario, he’s as bad as Hart. We need to give it a try.

Tyler Eifert

Broken right ankle, out for the year….

No….

No….

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

God damn it. Tyler Eifert broke his ankle on a very unlucky play. If you dare, watch the replay of his injury at your own caution – it’s a very gruesome and nasty injury:

Don’t start with the injury prone shit. This injury didn’t happen because he was injury prone. He didn’t tweak his back from running a route, he didn’t break his arm from getting softly tackled, he didn’t tear his ACL from running weird. No, he broke his ankle because of the way he was tackled. This could have happened to anybody. If anybody got tackled like the way Eifert was, that same result would have happened.

Eifert missing time will undoubtedly hurt us. Are Kroft and Uzomah reliable backups? Absolutely. However, Eifert is an elite tight end, and they are not.

Our offense will still be very good without Tyler, but him missing will hurt us in one way or the other. I don’t known what’s in store for Eiferts’ future. And right now, I’m not worried about it. I’m just hoping he has a speedy recovery. Get well soon, Tyler!

Postives

The Redemption of John Ross

Ross screwed up on a lot of different things last week. Like he should have, he received a lot of criticism.

Well, football is all about how you respond – instead of letting last weeks shitshow ruin his confidence, he bounced back. We finally got to see him make a downfield play. Ross had a beautiful 39 yard touchdown, where he ran up the seam against the Falcons cover 3 defense.

It was a perfect play call. Look at this beauty:

And that wasn’t it for Ross. He also had a beautiful toe drag catch. Great bounce back game from Ross.

Vontaze Burfict

Not a lot needs to be said about this, as this is pretty self-explanatory.  We have been missing the shit out of Burfict. Our defense as a whole has been struggling a lot. Burfict coming back will not just help us talent wise, but will help the defense get the emotional drive it needs desperately. God, I missed Burfict.

A new Andy Dalton

This isn’t 2013 Andy, this isn’t 2015, this is 2018 Andy. And 2018 is the best Andy yet.

The Red Rifle has never been better – even though for the past 2 years, Andy has really struggled. This year however; his poise, confidence, and pocket presence is out of this world. In 2015, he was riding on a talented offense. The offensive line in 2015 was so much better than the one we have now. Hell, our current offensive line is below average.

But despite our line being below average, Dalton has looked amazing. Dalton has the highest QBR among Quarterbacks when being blitzed, at 145.5. So Dalton just isn’t playing better because our offensive line has slightly improved – he has actually improved. This is the best version of Dalton we’ve ever seen.

I think that game winning drive was the best drive of his career, no joke. 16 plays, 75 yards, and an amazing game winning touchdown.

Speaking of the game winning TD, that might be the best throw of Andy’s career:

Literally a perfect throw.

The last thing with Andy, is the way he rallied the team. It’s worth noting that on that final drive, Ross, Eifert, and Gio were ALL not on the field. Still – he came through, despite not having all the Elite pieces.

That’s my Quarterback.

Question

Who will be the more effective TE in the passing game, Kroft or Uzomah?

With Eifert down, we need help. Kroft and Uzomah are proven to be solid backups. So who will have the bigger role in the pass game?

It’s hard to figure this out – but based off what we’ve seen this year, the answer seems like Uzomah. He seems to be getting the ball more, and being utilized in the offense more so then Kroft. With that being said, this offense has been scheming to have Eifert in it. Last year, we saw Kroft primarily take over with a no Eifert offense. This is an answer we won’t get until we see it. If I had to guess, they’ll split it.

3-1 heading back to The Jungle. WHODEY.

Written by Bengals_NFL

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