Greetings From Cincy Jungle: Ask A Bengals Fan

I can see now that this is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship. :)

Realistically, I’m of two minds. I’m well aware that the Ravens and Steelers pose challenges for our young offense. We honestly believe that our defense can handle anything either team throws at us, but the Steelers and Ravens defenses will be a challenge for Andy Dalton and I’m fairly certain opposing defenses are getting it in their minds to rotate their zone coverages towards A.J. Green — saw it a bunch against Seattle last weekend.

On the other hand, I’m a point right now that I don’t think any game on our schedule isn’t winnable. We’ve always posed problems for the Ravens — beat them like 9 of the previous 13 meetings. But that’s totally a homerific answer. Heh.

y’all are alright in my book, thats for certain.

They’re beatable and we can beat them. It’s just a matter of doing it, and that’s on Dalton, Green, and the LBs getting healthy at the right time.

no gifts from a defensive minded team. you have to earn each win. someone falls asleep on sunday and we go home with a loss.

Within a TD is reasonable. Our offense doesn’t blow people out but it’s just enough to outscore whatever the defense gives it.

Yep. He’ll be back this week, nice and rested after having the past two weekends off (bye week and then suspension). He’s our bellcow back — roughly 20-25 carries is generally expected of him. But he’s not playing that great. His yard/rush average is below four and he’s just not that explosive this year.

It’s not a concern because he’s never been the type of back that will win games for us — he’s the guy we rely on to shoulder the load with the lead late in the game to milk the clock. And in that perspective, he’s fine. Otherwise, he’s appeared nothing more than your pedestrian average running back this year.

I don’t know that benson has ever come back to cincy in 2011. his yards per carry this year are so low, he’d struggle to make 10 yards on 4 carries.

cincy’s coverage skills vs TEs are suspect as hell.

Defensive end Carlos Dunlap. Last year he generated 9.5 sacks, falling one short of Suh’s rookie-lead. And though he only posted his first sack last weekend of the season, he’s generated 23 quarterback pressures. Guys is in the quarterback’s face more times than not.

Linebacker Thomas Howard has been tremendous also; he’s strong against the run, especially containing the edges and our best linebacker in coverage.

Reggie Nelson, as some of you might remember from Jacksonville, is having a great year too. Guy is a hitter, but his coverage on deep passes, especially on the edges, leaves a lot to be desired.

Rush defense is far better than the pass defense for sure. Some of the top running backs we’ve faced this year.

Hillis (kind of overrated): 17 carries, 57 yards
Frank Gore: 17 carries, 42 yards
Fred Jackson: 17 carries, 66 yards
Maurice Jones-Drew: 19 carries, 85 yards
Marshawn Lynch: 16 carries, 24 yards

And respective to those games, they were non factors.

Willis McGahee is the only running back to gain over 100 against the rush defense.

Chris Johnson scares me though. Bengals are strongest against the run between the tackles. Not quite as strong on the outside.

our run defense is nasty. our pass defense is worse off this season, suffering from the loss of joseph.

Peko and Atkins salivate at runs through the tackles and Howard and Lawson are good at containing the edges. You’re better off throwing it deep all game.

We’re wondering where the real Mike Brown is. Please stand up.

And I say that not because of anything other than this.

I have 20 years of futility Bengals memories behind it. We’ve often been the stepping stone for a player to get back on track or have a career year. And Johnson is the type of talent with historical production which makes us nervous he’ll have a breakout game.

That being said, this defense is ranked second against the run thanks to a defensive front that’s very strong against the run. If you don’t move Domata Peko, there’s no lanes opening up over the middle.

However, this is also the year of broken trends. Other than our losing streak to Denver, we’ve broken every major losing streak we’ve had out of conference and I’m so damn happy for it.

If I remember correctly, the Bengals have one of the biggest offensive lines in the NFL. Andrew Whitworth is regarded as one of the top left tackles (some say the best, others firmly in the top five). Andre Smith (right tackle) has exponentially improved after disastrous rookie and sophomore seasons.

Kyle Cook (center) is solid and our left guard Nate Livings is probably the weakest of the group. Bobbie Williams at right guard is highly regarded as one of the top guards in the league, though he’s shown some decline.

It’s a good line. Not much depth behind it, but they can lean on you if the offense opens up with the lead.

Weakest position on defense is probably our safeties. Against the run those guys will smack you, and Chris Crocker is a good pass rusher. But throw the football deep, especially down the sidelines, they’re always a step slow in support.

On offense it’s a toss up between left guard and running back. I saw running back because save for Brian Leonard (third down back) none of them could be replaced by this time next year whereas the other positions have strong, young foundation players behind them. Some Bengals fans will argue with me about RB though…

than run blocking, which is a surprise to most cincy fans this season. we blamed benson for his horrible yards per carry average and no other cincy back has managed much better behind our o-line this year.

>That’s Livings
>spittake

Our OLines are notoriously big maulers that are generally good at run-blocking. Whitworth is the best LT in the game, and you probably witnessed our worst performance as a line on Sunday. It’ll get even better within the next game, I imagine.

Weakest position on offense is RB. Easily. On defense? Deep coverage in general. Hall’s good in the short-to-intermediate area, but he can’t cover deep, and Clements also sucks at that. Hopefully Adam Jones makes up for that. On defense? Our entire DLine will eat you alive.

Andrew Whitworth and Jaguars DT John Henderson

only 1 matters, wins. dalton is not the next coming of dan fouts. he’s only a rookie. as most rookies qb’s go, he’s made a few mistakes. hoping next year he cuts his turnovers in half. if dalton can do that, he’ll be a solid game manager for qb. which will work just fine in the ball control offense of a smash mouth wco afc north team.

dalton doesn’t need to be fouts to win in cincy, just don’t let him be rex grossman…

A lot of Bengals fans are comparing him to Ken Anderson, and while he hasn’t taken us to the Super Bowl, I still believe his accuracy and intelligence gives us the kind of ceiling that can take this team that far. I think he’ll always be the type of QB that needs a good team around him to do particularly well, but he’ll still elevate the players around him to do better. That’s something Palmer never could claim.

It might be the fact that the defense generally prevents long drives or that everyone seems to coat their fingers in butter before the games (seriously, so many dropped interceptions just in the last game alone, even Dunlap dropped one), but I do agree that our defensive rating could be even better if we got more turnovers.

Hey, I work in Dayton as a systems admin, but have only actually met three Bengals fans. But to put a smile on their faces, I usually take the ClevelandBrowns.com website and redirect it to Bengals.com. We laugh irrationally for hours.

Second in the league in forced fumbles. Interceptions we’re badly down though, yes.

Yes there’s drop-off, as we haven’t had a corner able to cover the WR deep, but Clements at least continues to make some key plays every week, even if he finds himself getting burnt now and again.

But, simultaneously, this makes it easier for the offense to win. The defense has had an additional TD every game but it only really mattered against the Colts, the offense usually does just enough to outscore whatever the defense gives up.

Haven’t felt that yet, no. We’re 12th in the league in scoring (though that includes some defensive scores), Andy Dalton has thrown a touchdown in all but one game (SF loss). And each of the past three weeks, the Bengals are averaging nearly 14 points per first half.

But more impressively is that the Bengals have scored 77 points in the fourth quarter this year.

I could see why you’d wonder, but no, we’ve never really felt that the offense anything other than setup when the pressure is really on. Except against the Jaguars, the defensive and special teams touchdowns just piled on. They didn’t win the games.

His ‘rain’ of terror in Tennessee was forgetable (except for the Giants game), the organization handled it well and we hope he figures out how to use his talent somewhere outside our division.

At worst a lowly piece of dirt.

There were a few other words I could use, but he is another example of idiotic athletes.
Oh, and he’s a terrible corner.

now mike on the other hand, 21 years of pinching a penny to make more than a buck on the field. often costing his team to satisfy his bottom line. to some of the cincy fans, mike brown is the anti-paul brown. a vile cur of a brown not worthy of possessing his father’s name or team.

some fans made this video which covers the general feeling i expressed about money over team.

note my tagline, if you want to know how i really feel about mike.

Not to take anything away from how things panned out, which DOES provide Cincinnati with a better foundation, but:

- Mike Brown absolutely lucked out when it comes to Palmer. Hue Jackson is good friends with Marvin Lewis and Oakland was desperate. Plus Jackson remembers Palmer back in 2005-06 when he was considered one of the elites in the NFL. Palmer may rebound, and if he does, good for him, but Palmer is nothing close to what he was several years ago.

Brown got lucky.

As for Green, that was just a no-brainer. But the selection of Dalton wasn’t Brown’s first choice. He wanted Ryan Mallett but Jay Gruden and Marvin Lewis convinced him out of it, picking Dalton instead.

You’re right. Neither can we get all of the other years out of our head. That being said we are well on our way to letting that go if this foundation is kept together and the success of this organization is actually sustained, rather than once every five years being a competitive football organization.