Quick thoughts - Bengals

[HoosierinFL]

My summary boils down to "we lost, anyone surprised? nope"

[GoBigBlue88]

Originally Posted by HoosierinFL

My summary boils down to "we lost, anyone surprised? nope"

More troubling: "we lost, anyone care? nope."

[DrSpaceman]

Originally Posted by HoosierinFL

My summary boils down to "we lost, anyone surprised? nope"

No

And even with the ball at the 45 yard line and time to get in FG range, I still didn't think this team would win.

And with the ball deep in their own territory up by 6, my feeling was they were going to throw an INT.

Lets just face it about JB.......he is a back up and he plays like it. I don't blame him for the losses. He is basically a rookie. His coaches suck.

However, he can't handle a pass rush. He makes bad decisions with the ball. He has a rocket arm and can thread the needle with his passes, time after time have seen him do that. Its not the physical part of being a QB he needs to master. He is still just a LONG way from being a good, week to week starting QB.

Yes there are drops. Too many. But there are also far too many sacks that truly fall on him and bad decisions that fall on him. You can't take a sack in the last two minutes while driving for the win like we saw today.

And yes he had to learn a new playbook coming here, but we are halfway into the season by now, there really should not be that limited of a playbook at this point.

[omahacolt]

Originally Posted by Puck

How you can hate PAGGONE NOW and not think the same of Chud is beyond me

Chud as a HC = PAG GONE NOW now it's just OC but still horrible!

Stupid decisions JUST STUPID

How can you not see this????

chud is bad for this team. yes. he sucks

but you were always going to say this. you took this stand at the beginning.

[Puck]

Originally Posted by omahacolt

chud is bad for this team. yes. he sucks

but you were always going to say this. you took this stand at the beginning.

Yes. I knew it was a bad decision.

[IndyNorm]

Originally Posted by GoBigBlue88

1. If you're not gonna fire Pagano at midseason, you gotta at least fire Chud. Holy shit. 4th-and-ballgame, you need 4 yards to keep the game alive, and you draw up a 20-yard downfield route to Hilton? That's laughably bad design. But that's Chud's offense in a nutshell. If Pagano won't go (he should), Chud should be a sacrificial lamb ... if nothing else as a message to Pagano that his hand-picked coordinator sucks.

Totally agree on Chud; he's complete garbage. I had some decent expectations after Pep was fired, but somehow Chud has actually managed to be worse

[southside asshole]

Originally Posted by GoBigBlue88

6. I'm hesitant to label that a bounceback game from Jack Doyle because we've seen Dwayne Allen have the exact same kinda game before. But it was a helluva game.

This is true, but I'm still higher on Doyle and the significance of this game because, for him, it's a return to form that's consistent with his ball skills and level of effort over his career so far. When Allen put together a game like that, it was notable for its rarity. For Doyle, the couple of bad games was the aberration.

Originally Posted by GoBigBlue88

14. I honestly think Pagano just doesn't *get* significant chunks of the NFL game. I think there are rules he doesn't understand (seriously). I think he doesn't understand the nuances of challenges. I think he's just not very good at this, and I hadn't realized before last week that it's probably because he had one year of NFL experience -- as a coordinator -- before coming to the Colts.

I've honestly been saying this for at least a year. I wasn't on here saying it, so it doesn't matter and I'm not trying to get points for being prophetic or seeing something sooner - just appreciating seeing my take on Pagano validated.

Every bad coach has been accused of not knowing what's going on in games, but in Pagano's case, it's literally what is happening. He spends significant portions of the game not really keeping up with the situation on the field. I have a pet theory on why that is.

Pagano does not have any instincts. With any competent coach, if you could pause the game at any point and climb into their heads, I think they'd have a very solid idea of what was going on - beyond down and distance, they'd have what you might call a working mental model of both teams, the officials, the field conditions, and what trends were emerging from plays on both sides of the ball and their outcomes. A competent coach walks out onto the field with a plan and then adapts to the changing circumstances throughout the game.

Pagano does none of this. I'll bet you anything that he's one of those people who describe themselves as "a processor;" the kind who can't give you a salient take on something in the moment when asked, but who wants to go back and "think on it for a while" so they can make up their minds about what they think. I don't have a problem with people like that, but it's a terrible trait for a head coach of a football team.

When a good coach calls a timeout, it's a tactical part of their strategy to win the game. It's to save clock, or get themselves out of a bad play, or cover for a miscommunication on the field, etc. I think Pagano understands the game well enough that he knows those are times you use a timeout as well, but I ALSO believe he uses timeouts reactively because he's become overwhelmed and confused, and he just straight up needs a moment to think about what to do.... because he does not instinctively know. The game outpaces his thinking in real time and he gets lost.

If you look for it, you see that happen at a bunch of different points throughout the game, but it's definitely his timeout and challenge management where it becomes the most obvious.