2021 NFL Season Thread

[tennbengal]

That's really too bad, because I was excited to see Justin Fields sooner rather than later.

Oh, and fuck failson Mike Brown for not drafting that Sewell guy, so Joe Burrow can get ruined sooner.

eff off.

The bengals signed a FA RT, already have Jonah Williams at LT, and drafted o-line in 2nd, 4th and 6th round and brought back an in-house FA G who is good.

Seriously, fuck off.

[DSafetyGuy]

That's really too bad, because I was excited to see Justin Fields sooner rather than later.

Fields' athleticism may become a life-saver. Literally.

Ryan Pace sucks.

[tennbengal]

Oh nos! How could the Bengals pass up Sewell?

[rass]

highly defensive TB really has me rooting for the Bengals to Bengal

[L-Jam3]

highly defensive TB really has me rooting for the Bengals to Bengal

I legitimately can't tell whether TB is being sarcastic. But whatever it is, keep it up.

[tennbengal]

actually not sarcastic. Had to listen that bullshit all off-season. It's lazy.

Sewell has issues and is NOT a lock to be good. His arms measured short for T - and you can see that rear its head in game 1 when another rookie (Rousseau) got into his chest with longer arms and discarded him and got to the QB. The Bengals have Jonah Williams at LT - top 11 pick from just 2019. Sewell would have had to switch to RT (having not played it since early in HS) and after taking a year off and learning how to manage speed rushers in the NFL. It is what Detroit is doing with him. It will probably work out - but there's going to be a learning curve for him there.

So, if the thesis is "lol bengals not protecting Burrow because they didn't take sewell" -- well, fuck off. You want to protect Burrow on the edges you get a vet into RT (which is what Riley Reiff is) and you expect your 3rd year top 11 pick at LT to be good (which he was last year). But some knee jerk they didn't take Sewell what a joke shit is just that, shit.

[tennbengal]

gunpowder's scouting report on sewell, right here on our board, still seems on point:

PENISES SEWELL, OT, OREGON

Sewell is this year’s Jeff Okudah. Everyone loves him, says he’s gonna be great, and it’s basically just accepted as fact, yet I just don’t see it. Like, yeah, he’s good, he has some amazing flashes, he’s still only going to be 20 years old during his first NFL game – but so often he’s just kind of stumbling around looking for someone to flail at.

[brian]

[Pruitt]

Bears signed the 39-year-old Jason Peters to compete to start at tackle this week. Why? Because last week when their #4 tackle returned to participate in practice, he was the only one of their top five tackles who could practice.

39 year old Jason Peters who was on IR twice last season.

[sancarlos]

I hate seeing the renewed emphasis on taunting penalties. Not that I like taunting, but it’s a slippery slope. One person’s celebration is another persons taunting and different people draw the lines in different places. To me, it also smacks of old white guys telling the young black guys to tone it the fuck down.

[L-Jam3]

actually not sarcastic. Had to listen that bullshit all off-season. It's lazy.

Sewell has issues and is NOT a lock to be good. His arms measured short for T - and you can see that rear its head in game 1 when another rookie (Rousseau) got into his chest with longer arms and discarded him and got to the QB. The Bengals have Jonah Williams at LT - top 11 pick from just 2019. Sewell would have had to switch to RT (having not played it since early in HS) and after taking a year off and learning how to manage speed rushers in the NFL. It is what Detroit is doing with him. It will probably work out - but there's going to be a learning curve for him there.

So, if the thesis is "lol bengals not protecting Burrow because they didn't take sewell" -- well, fuck off. You want to protect Burrow on the edges you get a vet into RT (which is what Riley Reiff is) and you expect your 3rd year top 11 pick at LT to be good (which he was last year). But some knee jerk they didn't take Sewell what a joke shit is just that, shit.

Hey, I'm more than willing to defer to your knowledge of the Bengals over mine. No disagreements there. And this is one case where I hope I'm wrong, because the overall product is better when QBs aren't running scared. I'm just leery because we have 30 years of evidence that Mike Brown doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. The rot is at the top, and I take no joy in seeing a whole fanbase just repeatedly beaten into submission.

[Giff]

I hate seeing the renewed emphasis on taunting penalties. Not that I like taunting, but it’s a slippery slope. One person’s celebration is another persons taunting and different people draw the lines in different places. To me, it also smacks of old white guys telling the young black guys to tone it the fuck down.

The one they gave to the Panthers RB for dragging the Colts D 13 yards was completely absurd.

[tennbengal]

Reading this in the voice of the kid from Goonies...

[tennbengal]

actually not sarcastic. Had to listen that bullshit all off-season. It's lazy.

Sewell has issues and is NOT a lock to be good. His arms measured short for T - and you can see that rear its head in game 1 when another rookie (Rousseau) got into his chest with longer arms and discarded him and got to the QB. The Bengals have Jonah Williams at LT - top 11 pick from just 2019. Sewell would have had to switch to RT (having not played it since early in HS) and after taking a year off and learning how to manage speed rushers in the NFL. It is what Detroit is doing with him. It will probably work out - but there's going to be a learning curve for him there.

So, if the thesis is "lol bengals not protecting Burrow because they didn't take sewell" -- well, fuck off. You want to protect Burrow on the edges you get a vet into RT (which is what Riley Reiff is) and you expect your 3rd year top 11 pick at LT to be good (which he was last year). But some knee jerk they didn't take Sewell what a joke shit is just that, shit.

Hey, I'm more than willing to defer to your knowledge of the Bengals over mine. No disagreements there. And this is one case where I hope I'm wrong, because the overall product is better when QBs aren't running scared. I'm just leery because we have 30 years of evidence that Mike Brown doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. The rot is at the top, and I take no joy in seeing a whole fanbase just repeatedly beaten into submission.

That's fine, but Mike Brown at age 86 has long since ceased running the day to day or making picks or pushing picks etc. That's also a narrative that is at least 10 years gone by. The de facto GM is Duke Tobin. The drafts rise and fall with him. For better or worse.

[mister d]

eff off.

The bengals signed a FA…RT...

Seriously, fuck off.

[tennbengal]

That probably tracks.

l-jam - you should be spamming this board with gifs and tweets on that ridiculous one-handed Reagor catch in the corner of the end zone yesterday in practice. As someone who has him on a team in a dynasty league - I was pleased to see it.

[Gunpowder]

Sewell got abused in his first preseason game. I mean yeah he should get better his anointing has never at any point made sense to me.

EDIT: NM, yinz have already gotten to this.

[Gunpowder]

While I'm on that, the Bengals don't need Penei Sewell. That's one guy who may or may not be good. They need like 4 or 5 competent offensive linemen. What would I have done? Probably traded down if possible (assuming I got a really good offer) and taken a few of them. I also would have not taken Jackson Carman. Do I understand pairing Burrow with a legit elite+++ WR prospect whom he happened to have a historic college season with? Yeah, I get that too.

That system at LSU was WR-driven. Burrow gets rid of the ball within a second or two to one of his cyborg WRs who is wide open every other play. He needs high-quality receivers. Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Mahomes to a degree? They don't need them. They will buy the time it takes for the play to work. But Burrow is all precision and I would bet that one All-Pro WR would have more impact than one All-Pro OT who still leaves the entire inside of your offensive as borderline non-functional.

There's a reason Tom Brady made a bigger fuss about not having WRs than Cam Newton did.

[Gunpowder]

actually not sarcastic. Had to listen that bullshit all off-season. It's lazy.

Sewell has issues and is NOT a lock to be good. His arms measured short for T - and you can see that rear its head in game 1 when another rookie (Rousseau) got into his chest with longer arms and discarded him and got to the QB. The Bengals have Jonah Williams at LT - top 11 pick from just 2019. Sewell would have had to switch to RT (having not played it since early in HS) and after taking a year off and learning how to manage speed rushers in the NFL. It is what Detroit is doing with him. It will probably work out - but there's going to be a learning curve for him there.

So, if the thesis is "lol bengals not protecting Burrow because they didn't take sewell" -- well, fuck off. You want to protect Burrow on the edges you get a vet into RT (which is what Riley Reiff is) and you expect your 3rd year top 11 pick at LT to be good (which he was last year). But some knee jerk they didn't take Sewell what a joke shit is just that, shit.

Hey, I'm more than willing to defer to your knowledge of the Bengals over mine. No disagreements there. And this is one case where I hope I'm wrong, because the overall product is better when QBs aren't running scared. I'm just leery because we have 30 years of evidence that Mike Brown doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. The rot is at the top, and I take no joy in seeing a whole fanbase just repeatedly beaten into submission.

One thing Mike Brown has known is building kick-ass rosters through the draft, somehow. I've explained my theory here and I think there's something to it. (My theory is that they don't spend nearly as much on scouting staffs as the other teams and thus follow along with all of the high-level draft coverage, ie they like the players that draft Twitter likes).

[L-Jam3]

Market inefficiency!

[DSafetyGuy]

Ryan Pace sucks.

I just laugh about this shit because it helps keep me sane.

[DSafetyGuy]

Every time someone tweets something about Pace and Nagy doing something stupid, I feel like I should write it down as if I was going to make a prosecutorial case as to why they should both be fired.

A GM whose strongest attribute is his 4th- and 5th-round drafting record and an offensive-minded coach who had to take away his play-calling duties last season.

[Pruitt]

I just laugh about this shit because it helps keep me sane.

Good God!

This is (hopefully) old Browns level shit.

[DSafetyGuy]

They did the same shit with Kevin White, who was their first round pick (#7 overall) in 2015. He had a stress fracture his rookie year that Pace and then-coach John Fox kept calling day-to-day through the first couple weeks of camp before announcing he was going to have surgery in mid-August and that White would hopefully be available before the end of the season. A column from that time (based on the premise that you couldn't take anything Pace said as the truth) said, "A sports physician with no connection to the Bears told the Tribune it typically takes three months before an athlete recovering from such surgery can resume training hard and six months before he feels right again."

Same shit from this guy whose first job was in marketing for the Saints. Tell me this doesn't look like an assistant regional sales manager who twice a month tells a customer how badly he screwed over a different customer, then tries to cover his ass by saying, "AMIRITE?... Just kiddin'."

HolidayPartyDrunk.jpeg (6.97 KiB) Viewed 626 times

[tennbengal]

In Cincinnati, finally moving on from their weird Bobby Hart fixation at RT to Reiff should help a ton in and of itself. Giants fans know. And now Bills fans do too...



Just look and marvel at that incompetence...

[brian]

I marvel at TB’s confidence in the Bengals front office. You, sir, are a magnificent optimist.

[tennbengal]

I promise you, it doesn't make anyone in the Cincy front office a genius to have spent THREE FUCKING YEARS with Bobby Hart at RT before moving on. But they finally moved on, and, yes, Riley Reiff is DEFINITELY an improvement on Bobby effin' Hart. Just by being average.

[Reaper]

That probably tracks.

l-jam - you should be spamming this board with gifs and tweets on that ridiculous one-handed Reagor catch in the corner of the end zone yesterday in practice. As someone who has him on a team in a dynasty league - I was pleased to see it.

I'll oblige for ljam.

[tennbengal]

So good. So smooth.

[The Sybian]

I took my son and nephew to a Jets practice last week. The most impressive guy on the field was the guy taking videos similar to the Reagor catch. A little guy with a handheld camcorder looking device. Every rep, the made him spring to the opposite sideline to record the outside receiver from a similar angle. Dude had to sprint the width of the field every single rep, get in position and record in about 20 seconds. Nonstop for 20 minutes. The heat index was 102, and you can add about 15 degrees on a turf field. Mad props to that guy.

Corey Davis was a beast in the red zone drills. The Jets secondary probably helped him look good, as he isn't known as a red zone threat, but he is huge and extremely quick switching directions and runs sharp routes. He was unstoppable (by a shitty defensive backfield). Just looked, Davis is listed at 6-3, 209, but he looks much bigger. Mims is listed at 6-3, 207, and I'd say Davis was taller and 30 pounds heavier. Wilson looked sharp. They were doing a lot of situational drills with the WRs against the DBs and LBs, and Wilson looked good on timing plays and finding the open receiver in the red zone. He is TINY. He is listed at 6-3 210, but there is no fucking way. He looks like a child. His legs are skinnier than my arms. Like I told my nephew, Wilson could be good after he hits puberty and fills out. What I loved watching was every rep taken by the 2nd/3rd string, Davis was with Wilson, gesturing about what happened, pointing things out. I'm not expecting much out of Wilson this year, but it was really cool seeing Davis is such a devoted guy. I had my doubts since he never really seemed to reach his potential in Tennessee, but with Henry getting obscene amount of carries, maybe the offense wasn't built for him to succeed, especially with Brown stepping up.

[HaulCitgo]

Monday night football this week. Maybe I'm late but love having a game on Mondays even if Sunday night is better. Football!!!!!!

[DSafetyGuy]

I promise you, it doesn't make anyone in the Cincy front office a genius to have spent THREE FUCKING YEARS with Bobby Hart at RT before moving on. But they finally moved on, and, yes, Riley Reiff is DEFINITELY an improvement on Bobby effin' Hart. Just by being average.

Bengal, I'm with you because it's small things that you have to pin your hopes on when your team's management is incompetent.

I mean, I'd love to be more excited about Justin Fields, in part because there's that four-year window where the Bears get to build around a rookie-scale starting QB contract. And it sounds great, especially because he was selected at #11 instead of higher ( for example, Trey Lance at #3 is four years, $34 million while Fields is four years, a shade under $19 million).

But, the Bears had to cut their starting left tackle this offseason to open up $9 million of cap space just to have enough room to sign their rookie class. Why?

Because they had fucked around with Allen Robinson, all they could do is tag him instead of working out a long-term deal with a lower cap hit this season. Oh, and there is pretty much no way he's going to return after this season after being jerked around.

Because they ran out as soon as free agency opened in 2020 and overpaid Jimmy Graham (two years, $16 million) because they absolutely had to have a 34-year-old TE whose receptions had decreased each of the three previous seasons, then picked up his option for this season because having a tight end who is primarily useless for 90% of the football field was more important than saving $7 million in cap space.

Because their other big 2020 free agency move was signing Robert Quinn to a five-year contract with two years and $30 million guaranteed because 30-year-old edge rushers who have their first season with double-digit sacks in five seasons are good investments. In turn, they let Leonard Floyd walk and he ended up taking a one-year, $10 million "show-me" deal with Rams, which he parlayed into four years and $64 million with them because he performed so well. Floyd had 10.5 sacks and 34 hurries last season while Quinn had two sacks and 18 hurries while complaining about playing outside linebacker in a 3-4. Quinn will probably not be a Bear after this season, but he'll be represented with a $9.3 million cap charge next season.

So, this kind of shit is why some people get happy about competent decisions.

[L-Jam3]

I don't know how long it will be for me that I see the initials "LAC" and not think "Los Angeles Clippers".

[Gunpowder]

The Teven Jenkins thing is one of those things I note with the "there are things about these prospects that we just don't know as outsiders", yet at the same time in another universe where he works out there's all the "how could so many teams pass on him?!?" stuff. Some of these guys are Gronk, some are Teven Jenkins.

The Titans took a guy with 2 back surgeries in the first round and got kudos for it.

[DSafetyGuy]

The Teven Jenkins thing is one of those things I note with the "there are things about these prospects that we just don't know as outsiders", yet at the same time in another universe where he works out there's all the "how could so many teams pass on him?!?" stuff. Some of these guys are Gronk, some are Teven Jenkins.

The Titans took a guy with 2 back surgeries in the first round and got kudos for it.

The Bears also got props because they traded up to #39 to snag Jenkins when he slid, grabbing a guy with a "first-round grade". He was mocked to them in several places in the first round at their original draft slot (#20).

[Gunpowder]

True but that was before we knew about the back issues. I'm talking more down the line, like when the Jags were getting credit for taking Myles Jack after he became a Pro Bowler.

[brian]

Not sure the Andy Dalton experiment is really working in Chicago. I get the Bears might not have wanted to rush Fields and there's legit reasons not to do so, but Nagy probably doesn't have the luxury of not handing the ball to Fields on Week 1.

[DSafetyGuy]

Not sure the Andy Dalton experiment is really working in Chicago. I get the Bears might not have wanted to rush Fields and there's legit reasons not to do so, but Nagy probably doesn't have the luxury of not handing the ball to Fields on Week 1.

A very large part of Warren Sharp's team breakdown of the Bears in his season preview is outlining how terrible Matt Nagy is at pretty much all facets of offense: playcalling tendencies, personnel usage/deployment, use of play-action (calling the majority of their play-action passes at a target depth of less the five yards), use of motion... Their offense was significantly better last season with Bill Lazor calling plays (pretty hilarious, right, Bengal?), but Nagy took back play calling duties this season.

I need to remember those season while posting that it's always that both Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy suck, not just one of them.

[tennbengal]

Re: lazor - it’s not ideal… then again - he had a good stretch with Dalton to start 2018 I think - if bears are gonna go Dalton then lazor should prob be the one calling the plays.

[DSafetyGuy]

Re: lazor - it’s not ideal… then again - he had a good stretch with Dalton to start 2018 I think - if bears are gonna go Dalton then lazor should prob be the one calling the plays.

He also got the best stretch of Trubisky's career out of him last season.

So, of course Nagy took back the play calling duties this season.