Well, 24 hours later...

Howdy, Bengal Nation. I hope you've all sufficiently recovered from the hangovers you all suffered Sunday morning due to the massive amounts of alcohol likely needed to get through Saturday night's nose-breaking extravaganza.

That's right, Carson has a broken nose.

They're probably not going to play him Thursday night. Gee, I hope not, at any rate. When your $118 million Pro Bowl quarterback leaves at the half looking like he did in my previous post, you've got some major work to do.

I watched the first half on NFL Network's replay last night (Saturday night) and took three pages of notes. Unfortunately my notes are not currently within arm's reach, so I'll link you to Kirkendall's breakdown of the offense's breakdown. He notes (accurately) that when Carson was getting hit most times it was not due to the front seven of the Saints' defense, but mainly a missed assignment/failure to pick up the blitz by the backs and tight ends while running their patterns.

Still not good when the face of your franchise has a busted beak, but it just MIGHT not be as bad as I and many others thought. If nothing else, the offensive line is now far more motivated to keep the $118 million dollar man standing at all times.

Levi Jones and Bobbie Williams said as much. Those words warm my heart, they really do, Mr. Jones and Mr. Williams, but as we have been wont to say the last few years, "I see better than I hear."

I will say this, however, at one point as a blitzer was coming through the line I screamed at my television the following words: "SOMEBODY GRAB HIS FACEMASK!!!" When it gets to the point it got to Saturday night, a statement has to be made sometimes...consequences be damned. The offensive line should have made any kind of point to the Saints' defense that they were no longer going to allow their quarterback to be knocked around like, well, I'm not even going for the easy metaphor. They should have done something, even something that would have resulted in them going backwards fifteen yards.

~

As hard as it was to write down anything positive about the football team we watched Saturday night, I will list the following improvements I saw on the field. With a couple of "not-so-improvements" peppered in for good measure, of course.

1. Tackling has improved a lot this offseason compared to what we saw in Green Bay.
2. The run defense looked pretty stout. Pretty darn stout, as a matter of fact. Domata Peko is a B-E-A-S-T Beast. Sims and/or Shirley need to apply some pressure next to him to keep the double teams off of the man.
3. Marvin White appears to have learned his lesson about wrapping, as he said he would.
4. Even though there were loooooong pass plays and at times they seemed to be passing at will, there are two things to keep in mind. One, Drew Brees is one of the top-five quarterbacks in the NFL, and he's got a pretty darn good receiving corps. Two, with a few exceptions the secondary was in a good spot to make a play on the ball. They need to focus on looking for the ball and MAKING the play on it now rather than waiting to make the tackle. Our corners still have a lot of promise.
5. I am very, very tired of watching the opposing quarterbacks cycle through their progression two or three times before choosing where to throw the ball. Again I say that I hope Antwan Odom comes as advertised, because we currently have absolutely no pass rush without a blitz. The corners are showing that with a little time (yeah, we're out of time, but it's going to take time for them to absorb a different scheme and what's now being requested of them) they will be able to successfully do what Zimmer wants them to. That means the linebackers and safeties are going to be freed up more often to blitz, and stunts will be a greater option. The only problem here is this...if no pass rush is generated by the front four at some point, opposing coordinators are going to quickly figure out that multiple WR sets will take the linebackers and safeties out of the pass-rush equation and we'll be looking at what we saw this weekend over and over and over again. It's been said ad nauseum before and I'll repeat it: Deion Sanders and a Deion clone couldn't cover NFL wide receivers with the time they're being given by our defense to change their routes.

~

Do you know what you get when you add up all the things I just talked about?

You get a football team that will be jockeying for position in the top eight picks of next year's NFL draft. I will admit I am marginally less irate/worried than I was last night after watching the game, but I can assure you that isn't saying much. That isn't saying much at all. Whereas I was absolutely ready to proclaim this a four-win team if it's lucky, I'm thinking more in the neighborhood of six wins now.

Anything can happen, of this I am sure. If the division plays as poorly as it appears to be playing, Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com may not have been too far off when he recently said that we could be looking at a .500 or sub-.500 team winning the AFC North this year. For the past three or four years there has been consistent talk from the media about the AFCN being one of the toughest divisions in football...

Those days are over, folks. The Browns have gotten embarassed the past two weeks (which I fully expected, and if you frequent CincyBengals.com you know that), the Steelers couldn't move the ball, and the Ravens, well...were the Ravens.

It's not a very happy day in Mudville, folks. Something's gotta change, and really really quickly at that.

Outside of a championship, the playoffs are every team's goal. Do any of you feel you'd be excited with a playoff berth for an 8-8 or even a 7-9 team?

Would such a playoff berth justify Mike Brown's perpetual cycle of mediocrity in his bottom-line thought process?

Sincerely,

A Moderately Less Pessimistic Bengals Fan

P.S. I really like the handle "A Pragmatic Bengals Fan" that I chose, as I realized last night that it can be quite easily manipulated to reflect my current outlook on our dear Bengals. Very serendipitous, you think?