BGO Blind Pig: Week 3 Washington Commanders at Cincinnati Bengals

[Boone]

On this week's Blind Pig, the guys revel in the record-setting FG-fest against the horrid Giants, and steel themselves for next Monday Night's much tougher test against a desperate Bengals team on the road.

 

[burgold]

It is difficult to imagine how we can beat Cincinnati, but I can picture us competing. We actually weee in the game against Tampa Bay and if we didn’t miss those two field goals would have been in a tough game into the fourth quarter.

 

[Boone]

True - but upsets happen multiple times weekly. Pretty sure Dallas and Philly didn’t see their Week 2 losses coming.

 

[Enforcer]

True about upsets and things happen, week to week. While I also don't see us winning, the Bengals themselves only put up 10pts and lost to a "not scary" Patriots team.

 

[Enforcer]

We talked about Ekler's big play and his mentality on the pod, and it turns out he made "Angry Runs"!

 

[burgold]

It was so frustrating and turned out to be foreshadowing when Eckler's opening kickoff return for a touchdown return was called back. I thought in real time replays that the call looked dubious, but that may be my inner homer. Nontheless, so many good plays got nullified. We shot ourselves in the foot so many times.

It is good to see that rumors that Eckler was old and completely out of gas are untrue.

 

[SkinsOrlando]

If we give Burrow time to throw it's gonna be a long long night on Monday with our defensive backfield. I'm curious to know whether it's scheme or if Allen and Payne have hit a colossal wall earlier than most and have just fallen off. I don't think Cincy spanks us but I don't see us getting the win. 24-16 Cincy.

 

[Bulldog]

I think Allen is aging and has lost some explosiveness. I think Payne is still effective but again we paid him dearly based on what he did in his contract year, a year he was not likely to repeat and something a number of us were indicating at the time.

Payne is not a 10 sack guy, that one season is an outlier, it just came at a good time for him to cash in.

 

[burgold]

Yeah, plus traditionally sacks are an unexpected bonus for DTs. You want them to generate push, clog the middle, and maybe apply some pressure, but no one really expects a ton of sacks regularly from the DT position. Pass rushes dependent on DTs are unlikely to be super successful unless you also have good enough ends to seal the edge. After all, a charging DT leaves a hole in the middle and if the ends can't contain then there's a vulnerability there too.

Mind you, this understanding of pass rush may be entirely obsolete. Frankly, it seems that the four man rush even with good DTs and DEs is obsolete for the most part, too. At least it sure seemed that way under Rivera.

 

[SkinsOrlando]

The fact we're not disrupting the passing lanes with any severe push into the backfield concerns me more than lack of sacks, maybe it's a conditioning issue because of no real live action and they'll pick it up as time goes on.

 

[Bulldog]

I know the corners are weak, but Whitt is running a very conservative scheme where it is a death by a thousand cuts each week.

We can't afford to blitz 50% of the time as you saw some teams do Sunday who have very good outside corners, but on key third downs I think we need to bring 6 in order to push these quarterbacks off their spot.

 

[SilentThreat]

Maybe I need to soften my frustrations with the interior of the DLine

 

[burgold]

I'm of two minds about this. I remember people saying Chase Young was ineffective because he kept being chipped and double teamed. That explained some of his ineffectiveness, but doubling especially in the interior is probably pretty common. At some points, you have to beat the double team or the guys being singled up because you are being doubled have to make them stop. Plus, it's kind of hard for me to imagine that Payne and Allen were both being double teamed on every play leaving one lineman to block two defensive ends. We should have seen a free runner pretty much every play unless they always kept a tight end and running back in... and you'd hope that our DEs would have an advantage over that in the long run.