A loss is a loss, and this one definitely sucks since it was a divisional game. Most of us expected the Bengals to at least split with the Browns this season since they are a team on the rise. The Browns will definitely surprise a few teams this season. But at least there are a couple of good things to take away from this game.
The Good:
1) Palmer. #9 looked like I expected to see him rebound at some point this season. It was great to see it sooner than later. His passes were on target, had great velocity, and his presense looked the closest thing to 2005 we have seen in sometime. Palmer took advantage of what the Browns gave him and stayed strong in the pocket making some key throws even with guys at his feet. Leading up to this week, you would have thought Palmer needed to be sitting in an old folks home with an adult diaper full of his own steamy crap of mixed veggies.
I love how the media went from Palmer is top five QB to he is done in just a one week span. This is just another example of how the media overhypes its subject matter, whether it is politics or sports, and is too lazy to do their job: investigate and report. Where were they between 2006 and 2008 while #9 was getting raped on the field? They could have at least put pressure on Mike Brown to adequately field an OL that could protect their $100 million dollar investment. Unfortunately, they were to busy cherry picking stats that made it look like he was still on top of his game.
I think Boomer made the most observant comment this past week out out of all the talking heads (from his interview with Hob, the grand pooh-bah of cherry picking stats – third on the list of course to Shawn Hannity and Keith Olberman).
“That’s not the Carson Palmer I know. He looks like he’s lacking confidence back there in the pocket. I’m not there every day, so I don’t know why that is. I don’t know if it’s the new receivers, or the protection, or what, but you wonder what is going on... No one doubts this guy’s physical skills, but I can’t tell you how much it means for a quarterback to have confidence. It’s everything.”
This game could be the kick in the ass that Palmer and the offense needed. His OL gave him time for the most part (more on that below), and Palmer took advantage of it. I don’t think this is the peak for the offense like we experienced against the Bears last year. If Palmer can build upon this game we could be in for a good run against a formidable schedule the next month.
2) Zimmer. Great defensive play calling again and he again won the chess match for the most part. Unfortunately, he became the victim of being Bengalized throughout the game by the mistakes. You have to give him credit; he gave up only two good drives to the Browns offense. The rest of points they gave up were off turnovers and bull shit penalties that put the Browns in scoring range.
3) Bratkowski. Yes I said it. You have to give the man credit when credit is due. He constantly attacked the Browns all day long, rather then sit back and hold onto the Brown’s 10 point lead like he has done in the past.
It was like Back to the Future with Brat. He successfully mixed up the play calling throughout the day: when we would show a run formation, we would pass; when Palmer would check at the line, we would pass rather than call the uninspired Benson that would be lucky to gain a yard; and most importantly he didn’t fall into the usual run, run, pass routine once we got in the red-zone. Except for a few critical plays where the Browns took advantage of our weaknesses, his play calling was really a thing of beauty yesterday.
The Bad:
1) Pass coverage against opposing TE’s. This is and will be our achilies heel the entire season. Zimmer needs to find a way or the right personnel to tighten this weakness up or this could kill us when we meet teams like the Buccaneers, Jets, and Steelers.
2) The big plays. The coaching staff I used to work with would always talk about winning the big plays. The idea was that a game typically has three big plays in it, and if you can win those three you typically can win the game. Unfortunately the Browns were able to win by making more than just three throughout the game. The blocked field goal, the third down penalties against our defense (most of them bull shit calls), and the key sacks/ turnovers were just too much to overcome.
The Ugly:
The OL Weakspots. The Browns took full advantage of our two weakspots on the OL to make the big plays that helped give them the win. The LG & RT are pressure points that be need to resolved or we are fucked. Livings gave up the sack on a simple twist stunt which handed the ball over to the Browns within their own 15 yard line. Luckily Zimmer and the defense held them to only three points to keep us in the game.
Roland whiffed on two big plays. The first, Roland didn’t step down and gave up the blocked field goal, costing us three points. The second was the critical 3rd & 13 with 5 minutes left in the game with the Bengals driving for the win. The Browns OLB ran right around all 6’-9” of him to get the sack setting up a 4 & 17 punt. Had he made that block, Palmer either moves the chains or gets them in position to allow Nugent to try to make the game tying FG.
The lesson that should be learned from this is that Mathis and Smith deserve their chance to start against Tampa. Moobs was in for a larger amount of snaps this week and from what I saw he did pretty well. Moobs did get worked by a spin move in the second quater, but Palmer picked it up and got out of the pocket to throw a nice completion to TO coming across the middle of the field.
We need to carefully watch how Hob spins this story this week. Last week Hob quoted Alexander as saying that Livings graded out as a 92 against Carolina. I don’t know how realistic that is since I didn’t get to watch that game, but there is no way in hell either of them should grade that well this week.
Funny you reference last year's Chicago game, contrasting it with this week's performance against the Browns to justify calling this week's performance by Palmer a return to form. I'm on the other side of the fence, and I liken Palmer's performance to the talking heads who talked about how devastating New England's running game was last weekend or how Ladanian Tomlinson is "back" after Sunday's performance - both those games were against Buffalo, and will more likely be looked back upon at the end of the season as statistical outliers, just as I feel this game will be for Palmer. Do you not remember the first game against Cleveland in 2007? The 51-45 shootout? If Palmer had a game like that, I'd be more inclined to say that he's had his wake-up call, but 371 yards and 2 tds (with 220 yards and both tds going to one receiver) is hardly the Palmer of old. That tells me he's still suffering from the same problem he's had all year - specificially, targeting TO the vast majority of the time. Unlike the other teams the Bengals have played, the Browns are apparently ill-equipped to cover TO, so Palmer was able to put up gaudy numbers.
Also, don't count on the bad coverage of opposing TEs to get any better - it's been a problem for the duration of Zimmer's career with the Bengals (remember Owen Daniel looking like the best TE in the league against the Bengals last year?) - I thought Adam Jones was signed to improve that, but I haven't seen it yet.
I don't know - I feel like I'm probably being overly negative, but, on the other hand, I just don't see where the on-field product deserves more optimism. This team is not a contender and, at this point, they shouldn't even be looked at as the favorites to repeat in the AFC North.
Posted by: Wyatt | October 05, 2010 at 08:29 AM
Slight correction Wyatt: Only one of Palmer's TDs went to Owens. The other was the shovel pass to Leonard. It's okay - I try to forget the shovel passes too.
Posted by: Mockenrue | October 05, 2010 at 01:17 PM
Brat still sucks. When the bengals were moving the ball, it was from the no-huddle. If we didn't get the penatly from TJ Ward, we would have just ended up with 3 points. We drove down the field in the no-huddle and then huddled up once we got in the red-zone. I believe that was a third down play to shipley???
Posted by: bguy_1986 | October 05, 2010 at 05:53 PM
last week's loss was completely devastating to me. not because we looked miserable. because we didn't and lost anyway. that is absolutely the worst kind of loss and i dont want to get too into it now as i need something left to post about, but this was a low point for me. big time. as i said last week there was and remains nothing to bitch about with carson, because he is playing quarterback for this team for this season as long as he is healthy regardless of all other factors.
my quick hit thoughts on your thoughts:
agree on inability to cover tight end ever. think this has less to do with zimmer (and almost nothing to do with pacman since a corner is generally not the answer against a bigger TE) and more to do with the fact that maualuga cannot cover, dhani is really too old and slow to cover and rivers just can't seem to put it together in coverage than anything else. crocker is going to get beat on seam routes on occasion, that's just part of playing chris crocker, i can't get too worked up over it, seneca made a literally perfect throw on the TD.
disagree that zim's playcalling was good or that he won the chess match. bottom line is the browns have zero receivers that can hurt us with our secondary, there is no excuse to let peyton hillis go for over 100 and/or run out the clock, absurd officiating or otherwise. none. i understand hillis had a good game, get some run blitzes called to stop this thing at the line of scrimmage, get him going sideways before he gets a head of steam for once. bring a corner blitz. anything. further, we forced nothing really turnover wise on a team that had turned it over all over the place the first three games. not good enough. and sorry, for all the love given to zimmer, guess who has allowed the most points in the afc north? the cincinnati bengals. that's who.
kind of agree bratkowski had a nice day. the shovel, even if everyone knew it was coming, worked perfectly so he has to get some credit for that. he can't take blame for long sacks/sack fumbles in playcalling given the situations, he has to take blame for roland which again, is not a playcalling issue. i thought he called a fine game.
to touch on o line though, continue to agree dennis roland (as ive posted previously) simply cannot start at the nfl level. cannot. to be fair, he cannot PLAY as a tackle on the nfl level either, so that is what it is. ditto with livings. i agree with you all i though andre smith didn't have a terrible game in his 24 snaps, but PFF seems to think he had a terrible day in pass protection. i'd frankly challenge their rating on him and would be intrigued to see if it was just getting beat on that one spin move in a big spot or what, but i didnt really see him make a huge mistake whereas i personally watched roland kill us again and he graded out higher in their eyes. makes me question their grading quite a bit, to be honest.
finally, i emphasize what weintraub emphasized over at FO this week. we got absolutely jobbed on multiple calls down the stretch which cost us the game. i firmly believe cleveland is about a .500 club in real terms and i also firmly believe we're a slightly better than that club. well, when you go on the road in that matchup you can't get jobbed by officials, make a few turnovers in bad spots, have a FG blocked and expect to win. that's just it, so we let one slip through our fingers. and it fucking hurts, because we really needed to be 4-1 at the bye. the way it is now, we are facing a not just saying it because its cliche must win against tampa this sunday. again though, i will touch on all of this more tomorrow, and i apologize for the lame nature of this response, as you can see its taken me a day or two to be able to write anything on this team after sunday...
Posted by: tide182 | October 06, 2010 at 01:19 AM
Win against TB on Sunday puts us in a position to have to be better than .500 after the bye against a brutal schedule. That would need to include at least 3 more division wins. 10-6 4-2 in the division is likely the minimum necessary to get a playoff bid. IMO.
Again, my persepctive says the blocked FG and the phantom defensive holding call against Sims on the last CLE drive were the killers.
Posted by: CurseofBoJackson | October 06, 2010 at 10:20 AM
@ Wyatt: Yes, I think you are being too negative. The point of my post is that I saw a lot of good things in this game. I think the offense is working out its problems and is finally getting it together. This could have been a 35 pt day for the Bengals offense if it weren't for those key mistakes that the Browns took advantage of.
@ bguy: Yes, the play to Shipley was on third down. It's too bad Palmer didn't wait a little longer b/c Gresham was just making his break on his route back to the inside and would have been an easy TD. But we did luck out there with that penalty to give us a TD.
@tide: I don't think you can say the Browns don't have WR's that can hurt us when their #1 went off on us for 140+ yards last year. From my notes that I made while watching the game, I have Zimmer beating the Browns for most of the game except for the Browns first drive of the second half and their last drive to finish the game. We received two key third down penalties during the Brown's drives that put them in FG range. Typically in those situations where they stop them but give the opposing team a fresh set of downs b/c of a stupid penalty, the other team usually pushes deeper down the field and scores since the defense gets flustered. Against the Browns the stayed level headed, and just held them to FG's. You can't ask for much more then that, except for a game changing turnover. In the second half, after he adjusted to the Browns first drive, Zimmer forced the Browns into 3 downs & out three consecutive times.
I agree, Brat has to take the blame for Rowland. I said this a couple of weeks ago that I believe they should throw Smith in the fire and go with it; even if it costs them a game or two while he catches up to the speed. If you watch the TO highlights (http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-game-highlights/09000d5d81b0732a/WK-4-Terrell-Owens-highlights), Smith is in 3 of the 7 plays, and he looks pretty good. Even when he falls for the spin move, he recovers and still stays with his man. I'd like to see him start against Tampa this week. I don't agree with that score either, there is no way he is worse than Rowland.
I also agree of the penalties. In my notes, I have three bad calls on 3rd downs against: 1) Nduke at the end of the first half to give the Browns 3; 2) Jones on the Browns first drive of the second half to help give them 7 points (the Browns then came back to Jones with a pass to the TE on the next play - this was Zimmer's one drive where he got worked); and 3) Simms. Unfortunately, that is just part of the game.
The Browns will be a .500 club or below that this year. However, they have an emerging defense that is a clone of a Rex Ryan defense, which is always tough even though they don't have all of the pieces yet, and they have a solid OL as well. This will allow them to beat some good teams this year at home. They are where the Bengals were back in 2003. So think of the upsets we pulled that year- especially the big one against the undefeated Chiefs in week 11 or at the Steelers the following week.
But most importantly, if our offense can keep the engine running and build upon this game, we could be in for a good stretch run later this season. I don't see this team peaking at the mid-point of the season like we did last year. If this team can stay healthy, and they can continue to get better, this team is good enough to make it to the playoffs and possibly make a push into January and not just be a one & done team.
Posted by: blesterov | October 06, 2010 at 10:53 AM
You can't ask for much more then that, except for a game changing turnover. In the second half, after he adjusted to the Browns first drive, Zimmer forced the Browns into 3 downs & out three consecutive times.
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