I'm not huge on making big time judgements on the same day of a bad game. Too many bad vibes flowing that ride more on emotion than sensible evaluation.

I watched the game again today and was more pleasantly surprised than anything else.

First, the Bengals have one very solid football team. They are the better team and that is a big part of why they won. Their o line blocking is fundamentally as sound as I've seen in quite some time. You can see these guys know each others tendencies, even with a couple starters missing. They just do not miss many blocks at all. Our o line improved some over last week. The Bengals have a pretty decent front, but, for the most part, our guys did their job protecting Charlie.

However, the run blocking is still atrocious. Guys are flat out whiffing. One of the first plays of the game, Shaffer completely misses the D End. I mean, it wasn't even close. This, though just one example, typifies a larger problem. Plays like this proved to be a larger example of the problems I've seen so far with this unit. Guys are missing assignments. That's inexcusable.

READ MORE